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Re: And the Results are: Sat, 05 June 2004 17:22 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
bloodstorm is currently offline bloodstorm

 
Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 10
Registered: January 2004
Location: California / Sweden
 Here's a summary of the game from my perspective. Pull up a map to follow along:

Q-TIPS
PRT: SS
LRT: IFE, NRSE, ISB, NAS, LSP
Grav: Immune
Temp: -12C to 156C
Rad: 45mR to 89 mR
(equals 1 in 5 planets habitable)
Growth: 19%
One resource for every 1500 colonists.
Factories: 12/9/12 (1 kT less Ge checked)
Mines: 10/10/5
+75%: En, Co, Pr, Bi. (starts at Tech 3)
Standard: El.
-50%: We.
No left over points.

GAME STRATEGY
Before the game started my intent was to keep a low profile and rely on remote mining to produce enough Ge to build all my factories. My race needs quite a few factories actually, 44% more than a nominal race, and coupled with the 19% growth rate this creates a huge craving for Ge. In test beds this worked really well, and I achieved superb resource levels by the usual bench mark years 2425, 2450. Note that the race does not have OBRM, so it transitions naturally to war time economy with great remote mining. Well, that was the theory at least...

THE EARLY YEARS (2400-2417)
The game started and I find that my homeworld is LGM 4, the most centrally located of all HWs. Annoying. With NAS I scan all the way to my neighbour's HWs right from the start. By observing their scouts and colony ships I quickly learn that my nearest neighbours are the Legion (IS) to the East with HW Raven's Eye, the Dark Angels (SS) S at Haig, and Woblor (SS) W at Frederick. My neighbour N is Asgard but they are a bit further away at Aqua. I also figure out that the Lemmings are somewhere NW, the Ethereals NE, the Adioids and Fnord SE, the Specks and Pionner SW, the Anarod and BFTs W. (The locations of the other races remained unknown to me to much later in the game.)

My initial scouting reveals much fewer than 1 in 5 habitable planets. Frustrating. I bite the bullet and settle Utgard, Bootes, Excel, and 007. These would remain my only planets for decades. The Legion settles Barbeque soon after I settle Bootes. I suggest a joint defense of the Bootes-Barbeque cluster, in the back of my mind thinking that this could be the first step toward a possible alliance in the long term. After all, a combination of IS and SS toys could be much fun. I don't suggest an alliance at this point, though, since I think it's way too early to discuss such things. The Legion, however, is not interested even in the limited cooperation that I suggest. He sends me a few messages about how Bootes is his planet, and how he's promised it to someone else in a trade. Through scouting and some communication I learn everyone's hab ranges and figure out that if the Legion has promised the planet to someone it must be the Woblor. Unfortunately for me, the Woblor, the Legion, and myself have very similar hab ranges. I'm the one in the middle, so an obvious move on their part would be to ally together and attack me from both sides, divvying up my planets between them, and establishing a physical connection between their two empires. Ouch. I put up empty orbital forts on Utgard and Bootes to prevent pop drops, and I go on a diplomatic offensive, trying to learn what I can from other races about the Legion and the Woblor. At this point, Dark Angels are pretty quiet and I had a small mishap with the Asgard (accidentally dropping a small freighter's worth of colonists on Bilskirnir), so my best communications were with the Lemmings and the Specks.

The Lemmings don't know anything about either the Woblor or the Legion, but he promises to send along whatever information he picks up from his scouts. The Specks don't know much about the Legion, but has noticed that the Woblor isn't colonizing anything and is producing remote miners like mad. Worrying. I suspect that the Woblor might be a one world wonder, and of course he has to be right at my doorstep. Great. I decide that I can't risk building remote miners of my own at this point because they would be sitting ducks against a 1WW race. (This was a mistake; I should have remote mined around Excel, which remained a safe area throughout the game.) I'm beginning to think about getting myself an ally. The problem is that I can't think of why anyone would want to help me. The Asgard had graciously overlooked the Bilskirnir incident, and the Lemmings and Specks were sharing much information. All possible candidates, but the Asgard is CA and I couldn't imagine he'd be interested in an early war, and the Lemmings and Specks are far, far away. The Dark Angels would be a nice ally, but we had no communications going at this point, and he seemed happy to intersettle with the Adioids.

Next thing (this is in 2411) I get a message from the Specks, essentially a warning that something "crazy" will go down involving me, the Woblor, and the Legion. Panic. I send medium freighters toward Utgard (two years travel time) and Bootes (three years travel) with enough minerals to arm my orbital forts there. In 2415 the Legion shows up with four medium freighters (with cargo pods) to pop drop Bootes, but gets stopped by my orbital fort. I warn the Asgard, the Specks, and the Lemmings of the expansionist nature of the Legion. Unknown to me, it turns out that the Dark Angels have also been worrying about the Legion/Woblor alliance, and that they have been in serious discussion with the Specks about this threat, and what to do about it. So, out of the blue, I get a message from the Specks and the Dark Angels in which they suggest a three-way alliance. This would be a full alliance sharing all information, .pla files, splitting up research duties, exchange tech, transfer war ship fleets, and evacuate planets if someone else could use them better. Since I was effectively at war with the Legion, and ill-prepared for it, I didn't take long to think about their offer: I accepted.

THE ALLIANCE YEARS (2418-2460 game end)
Research in the alliance was organized so that Specks would research We, Dark Angels would research Co and El, and the Q-tips would research or (using their central location to their advantage) trade for the other three fields (Q-tips traded for a couple of levels of Bi early in the game and Pr late in the game with the Asgard, and En was provided by the Ethereals). Our interior tech exchange worked pretty well, except I always felt that I was behind in We because the Specks are HE and lack star gates, causing a slight delay in We transfer. (FYI, when the game ended in 2460, the alliance tech levels were En 14, We 20, Pr 13, Co 15, El 14, Bi 13.)

During 2418-2425 (or so) the Legion tried to intercept freighters going to and from Bootes using their Mini-gun FFs. They were pretty unsuccessful as their FFs did not have enough firepower to destroy a freighter in one year of combat. Nevertheless, it was a clear indication of the Legion's intentions, and sure enough, in 2421 they show up at Bootes with 11 Spit Ball DDs armed with 2x Beta torps, 2x BCs, fuel mizer and fuel tank, destroying my orbital fort with 9x Beta torps, 5x X-rays, 10x Crobmnium, 11x Cow-hide, 1x BC, and pop-dropping the planet with five medium freighters (156000 troops). This was not enough to take the planet, though. I still had 199500 colonists left and put up a new orbital fort with 24x Beta torps, 20x Crobmnium, 1x BC, calculated to be enough to defeat the Legion fleet if he stayed in orbit. I didn't expect him to stay, but he did, and his fleet was destroyed. I imagine this fleet represented a significant Ir investment on his part this early in the game (especially since he's IS), so this must have been a serious backlash. For the remainder of the game, Bootes remained well fortified and unattacked, even though positioned in what effectively was deep inside Legion space. Dark Angels held Trog for a long time, despite this being a red planet to them, which was useful in sending more colonists and minerals (Ge and Bo) to Bootes from LGM 4. After the Legion later took Trog I resorted to heavily cloaked large freighters to run back and forth. These were unescorted but were never attacked (so presumably undetected?). The Legion put his attention to his south after failing to take Bootes, at first going after Fnord/Adioid worlds, but then getting hostile with the Dark Angels. I'll leave this part of the story for the Dark Angels to write about since they know the details better.

In the meantime, a wormhole allowed Dark Angels to settle on Whistler's Mother, near the Woblor HW. The Legion settled Niflheim. The Specks settled Harrison and Lambda. Realizing that we were sitting on a powder keg, we decided to grasp the initiative and attack first. In the early 2430s, the Specks built a large fleet of Jihad DDs and Colloidal Phaser DDs along with bombers on his larger production worlds Mandrake and Arafat, and on his HW, Brass Rat. The goal was to eliminate the Woblor from the game, ensuring that we alone would have SS toys in the end game, and hopefully slowing the Legion's progress toward Tachyon Detectors. On his way to Frederick, Specks first struck Sodium, destroyed the space dock and bombed the planet. Simultaneously, Dark Angels destroyed the space dock at New, to prevent Woblor ship production there, and the Q-tips raided and destroyed the Woblor remote mining fleet. I believe we would have destroyed Frederick two years later except that there was a miscalculation on how much fuel was needed, so the Specks fleet couldn't reach the refuel point at Whistler's Mother in one year. The fleet went to Niflheim instead, just as the Legion gated in a large fleet of his effective Bayonet FFs (Colloidals and Croby Sharmor). The battle caused heavy casualties on both sides, with the Legion gaining the upper hand. Next we tried swinging a second fleet of Jihad DDs past the east side of Sodium/Niflheim directly to Whistler's. As an escort against the Bayonet FFs, the Q-tips sent a fleet of Pulsed Sapper FFs to drain the Legion's shields. We simmed this and were certain we'd win if attacked. Unfortunately, the Woblor joined in the battle (which occurred in deep space E of Niflheim) and messed up the battle board so that our ships started on opposite (diagonal) corners, giving just enough time for the Legion ships to destroy the Specks ships before the Q-tips downed the Legion shields. Armed with only pulsed sappers, my ships got destroyed a couple of rounds after that.

Around this time we got undisputable proof of cooperation between the Legion and the Asgard, something we had been suspecting for a while. Faced with a Woblor/Legion/Asgard alliance, we were seriously worried. If these three joined in a full alliance (remember that the rules of the game says that three can win the game together) we'd have a hard time. We figured that the Asgard and the Legion were number one and two at the time, and that the Woblor was in the top five. I had just climbed to ninth, the Dark Angels were around number six, and the Specks were third. We decided to contact the Lemmings and the Ethereals to form a larger group of five, where the Lemmings and the Ethereals would fight the Asgard while the three of us were busy with the Woblor/Legion. A sudden change in playing style on the Asgard part helped us; the Asgard suddenly sent colonizers to the planets around Excel, in clear violation of our border treaty, and he also attacked the Lemmings. The Lemmings declared war on the Asgard while I pop-dropped half a dozen Asgard planets. I confronted the Ethereals with an ultimatum: either work with us or with the Asgard. He said he'd work with us, and for proof he sent us long email chains sent back and forth between the Asgard and the Legion. I couldn't believe it. Here was the entire Legion war plan spelled out. How they would push south from Niflheim while the Asgard were to attack the Q-tips from the north. We also learned that the Asgard player had been away during Easter and that the Legion player had played his turn during this time. This explained the sudden change in playing style, certainly. With this in mind, I made peace overtures with the Asgard, and they agreed, leaving my northern border secure, and leaving them with only one enemy. Yes, as you know, the Lemming war continued, even though they figured out how the whole thing got started (a scouting incident). The Ethereals gave our group of five the nickname "the Resistance" and sent regular emails with info on what the Asgard and the Legion were up to, signing his emails as "Resistance Spy." He also sent a couple of hundred of En tech scouts to us. At least seven levels each, from 7 to 14, for all four of us. Despite this, our group-of-three alliance never trusted him; it would be interesting to learn where his allegiance really lied. At the same time, our group-of-three sent tech to the Lemmings, mostly We, to keep them in the game.

With our northern border safe for the time being, we made plans for a second offensive on the Woblor. The Legion had kept his fleet in this area, and attacked the Dark Angels at Whistler's Mother and Hydroplane. He didn't stay to take over the planets however, but held to the plan spelled out in his emails to Asgard and pushed south to Harrison. Then the Mystery Trader showed up and the Legion used his fleet to try to prevent trade. The Specks built a new fleet, this time consisting of metamorphs of three designs: 10 metamorphs (MMs) with 8x Bludgeons, 4x Organic Armor, 2x Wolverine, 3x Man Jet, and TGDs, 51 MMs with 8x Mark IV blasters, 2x Phased Sappers, 4x Organic, 3x Man Jet, and TGDs, and 56 MMs with 8x Juggernauts, 4x BSCs, 2x Organic, 2x Man Jet, 1x Jammer 20, and TGDs. The Bludgeon and beamer MMs were transferred to Q-tips control, and Specks and I made a flanking move on the west side of Harrison/Niflheim/Sodium (except for a smaller group heading toward Linq and Neuter). We attacked and bombed out New with B-17 Cherry bombers (Specks built 36 of these so far), while the Dark Angels took over Lycra, and an older Q-tip fleet destroyed the Woblors rebuilt remote mining fleet (the third raid on his remote mining; I never figured out why he didn't defend them better). Simultaneous with this, Dark Angels mass packeted Scotch, Emoclew, and Linq, and wiped out the Legion population there. I settled New allowing refueling, and we continued to Hell and repeated the procedure. That brings us to 2460 where we were on the verge of attacking Frederick and also Neuter (with a Dark Angel Juggernaut battleship fleet from Poly Siren). In the next couple of years after that we were planning an offensive on Harrison/Sodium/Niflheim with Doomsday BBs, followed by an invasion of the Legion home territory using Mega Disruptor Flux Cap BBs. Once that was done, we'd have gone to open war with the Asgard.

IN CLOSING:
Finally, answering some questions from emails: Yes, all three of us traded with the south-bound mystery trader. (Who else did? Did anyone trade with the east-bound MTs?) Yes, I got remote mining going eventually, using Maxi-Miners with 10x Robo-Super-Miners, 2x Ultra-Stealth cloaks, and IS10s. Each ship mines about 1000 kT per year at a good planet (or 2000 kT per year at a place like Bagnose!).

I'm obviously leaving out a bunch of stuff, but I hope that was most items of interest. Dark Angels or Specks can maybe add to this if I forget anything? I'd be happy to see the race designs I haven't seen already (i.e., Pionner, Lemmings, Ethereals, Legion, Woblor).

Thanks for the game. It was very enjoyable, although next time I hope I start in a corner somewhere.

Q-tips.

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