Matrix Games Forums

Forums  Register  Login  Photo Gallery  Member List  Search  Calendars  FAQ 

My Profile  Inbox  Address Book  My Subscription  My Forums  Log Out

RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation

 
View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest
Users viewing this topic: none
  Printable Version
All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series >> After Action Reports >> RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation Page: <<   < prev  1 [2]
Login
Message << Older Topic   Newer Topic >>
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/4/2014 6:40:29 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Timotheus

Reading this guide is against my religion.



You should never disrespect the power of the lord of Automation.

Seriously, it is not problem playing with it, and it is not necessary to be as stubborn with it as I am in AARs. Fighting automation in taxes or design is a bit painful. For the rest, the AI will let jobs finish. So if I really was annoyed at not getting bigger shipyards, it would be no problem for me to click for it to be the research project.

The reason why it is hard to fight taxes and designs, is that these are areas frequently revisited by the AI, and it will quickly overturn the existing settings. Characters are probably the same, but I never bother with them. Troop recruitment not as badly, since the AI probably ever retire troops if it feels the need to save money.

(in reply to Timotheus)
Post #: 31
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/4/2014 1:36:54 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
Housekeeping

Invasion fleet has its repair order interrupted as we realize it is just the fleet leader with damage. And that is a destroyer. They are sent towards najarca. Apart from that, this is just clicking around in ship and fleet list.

We should have a couple of decent destroyer fleets for all our colony systems to hit at any visiting pirate. And some Raider fleets of frigates/destroyer to respond to activity and do small scale mine attacks when relevant.

With 115 destroyers and 39 frigates, something should be possible to arrange.

I name defense fleets for example "X Dhayu". I put the X to have them sorted by name, and at the end of the list.

Another fine feature of the names Battle and Crusher is that they are early in the alphabet. Invasion is also ahead of Raider, and there may be many raider fleets, but not that many of the other ones.

Just about nothing will stop a big pirate raid, so better not try to post defensive fleet that could manage that...

10 destroyers of Construction become Montu Kudru defense fleet.

2 cruisers from Construction is assigned to battle 4 to put it at 14 cruisers.

All destroyers and frigates of Dest 2 move to construction.

14 cruisers of Construction to Dest 2, renamed again to Battle 2

15 assorted damaged ships of construction form X Sollost, frigates and destroyers formerly of Dest 2. Capital system defense should not rely on Construction having ships or someone happening to be at home, and pirates attack mines here. They won't do much if an invasion comes, though.

10 healthy frigates and destroyers of Construction forms X Dhayu

10 healthy destroyers of Construction becomes X Sipan

Construction is getting a bit low on ships, with some frigates, destroyers and cruisers. More will be available from Dest 3, Crusher 1 and Sipan Fleet once we have more cruisers.

The two new colonies are more likely raid targets and will see main fleet attendance at first. Dhayu has visitors in 3 lone daggers, Battle 2 heads there to help out, but damaged ships (all carriers and a cruiser) in the fleet has individual repair orders (after the fleet is told to move, a fleet order is an order to all the ships).

All X fleets not being Sollost are told to return to base (which is the colony in the system of course).

277k credits.

We manually queue 3 construction ships at the capital. A safe place to build them. We can afford them and it should not hurt.

We order:
6 troop transports for flexibility.
And 37 cruisers.

37 should be enough for Battle 3 and Crusher 1 (14+25) with some help from a few already in construction. They join construction, troop transports are automated.

Also, we can not afford more than 37 cruisers at this time...

We spam some troops on our Dhayu populated colonies. The capital builds only special forces and armor.

Execution!

As the pirate base battle in Pantulumen almost immediately ends, invasion fleet is told to load troops after making sure that the two new colonies both has 5 garrisoned. The fleet leader repairs, which will make them end up at the capital. Fighting ships should get to Dhayu 3 before any loading transport arrives so that is not a problem in this case (pirates roam that system, remember).

Crusher 1 is at Najarca, Battle 4 is on the way to watch Pantulumen for now. Battle 3 is still at Beate to protect it.

We realize the silliness of Dest 3 sitting there. We reassign the destroyers and frigates.
7 destroyers and 3 frigates becomes X Atuuko. We form Raider 1 and 2 with 3 frigates and 3 destroyers each. And send 2 small ships to Construction Fleet. The fleet now has only 4 carriers, and moves to the capital to await its cruisers.

One raider to park at a mine (of ours) in a system near Atuuko, the other to a mine in a system near Sipan.

As fleets arrive at Arexie and Dhayu 3 we start to build a defensive base on top of each one. We also build on top of Najarca and Pantulumen.

A pirate attacking the new defensive base build at Najarca shows why it is a good idea with ships in attendance. A defensive base with 3 complete modules is not hard to destroy. Crusher 1 took hand of it just fine. Battle 4 attends the Pantulumen build.

2163.11.04 There is a stream of visitors for Najarca, the former independent. Fierce Moon Minerals attack a mine in the capital system, and we can't see a base of theirs less than 2,5 sectors away. We wonder if there is an unknown one nearby. One more pirate group for the "annoying" list. For a while we worried that all the defensive fleets members would be in queue for repair, and that Construction had almost no ships. We forgot about 2 alien capital ships, and there were about 20 more attending to them as well. One ship captured for retirement.

2163.12.09 3 lone dagger ships attack a mine in the capital system. Where did they come from? An unknown base nearby? We should gaze more at the capital long range scanner circle to see the direction of approach. Which we won't manage to do...

As cruisers are complete, the first 12 are assigned to Battle 3, and the leader moves to Sipan. There is an independent that we target in the north, and another good fleet in the area is useful. We complete the cruiser count to 14 with 2 cruisers currently under construction at Sipan.

We are impatient. There is a good queue at the capital spaceport due to repairing ships and builds, and the invasion fleet leader is in the queue. We move him to Construction, fetch a new lead destroyer from the same fleet, and send him to Sipan 4. We want the transports moving north on its tail.

2164.06.04 New visits by the lone daggers and fierce moon int he capital system, at the same time, fooling our defenders. We queue a monitoring base at the approaches from the gas cloud in the west. And a couple that could cover approaches from the NW and NE. At this time the long scanner range seems rather pathetic though, as there is a long distance between Sipan and the rest.



2165.08.20 Sinister Invaders field a proper attack on Pantulumen 2. Battle 4 and a defensive base are present. The base has low shields since it is new.

The attackers die, but manage to land 1 raider. The Sinister Invaders are bumped on our "Annoying" list. They have 3 known spaceports to the east, a bit further than the former lone dagger systems. The 10 or so troops (5 garrisoned) manage just fine.



2164.09.13 Sipan Fleet is repaired, and launches for the juicy independent mentioned at the last status. A large, high quality securan/atuuk world. It is pirate owned. Battle 3 is also at sipan, and refuels, then queues a move to the same star.

Most of invasion is also at Sipan, with enough troops.

We order 3 carriers at Sipan, and have them join Sipan fleet. We forgot the losses from last time. We know that we have a sipan fleet to update, and order 25 cruisers with the rest of our money. There is always some use for a cruiser or ten, anyways. We still lack some non-battle-fleet defenses at Pantulumen and Najarca, and soon, hopefully, a juicy current pirate colony. Sipan fleet could supply destroyers and frigates for that.

A small lone dagger fleet attacks a mining station in Dhayu. We order a monitoring station in a resource less part of a gas cloud to our SW. Maybe that was where they came from? The local ships of course reacts, there are ships in colony systems now!



The lone sun attack a mine north of Sipan where a raider fleet is present. It is a dangerously looking capital ship. Diplomacy screen tell us that this is the only ship of this group. One ship takes damage, the capital jumps away. Raider 1 heads to sipan for repair and fuel.

As Sipan fleet lands in the target system, a few pirates are present. There is no spaceport, and they move to the lovely moon of Ecery, where the colony is. Invasion at sipan is told to attack, battle 3 is incoming with planned guard duty in mind. We realize that the lone trade interstellar is starting to build a spaceport in the system. Sipan fleet is told to attack the construction ship doing the build rather than hang around at the colony.



This time, with fighters assisting, a construction ship is destroyed without the help of hyperdeny. The fleet continues with mopping up the few pirates in the system.

The contents of Invasion fleet vs 1 atuuk militia and a fleet admiral, is not exactly an exciting battle at Ecery. A couple of transport has to unload troops as the battle is quick, and we want troops for a garrison of high quality dhayut troops.

Its a beauty in need of some resources and a pirate cleanup. The population is at max. The pirate battle will start at 202 vs 994 to our advantage and improve as transports unload. Anything above 400 for us should be OK.

This is a spot where a fumbled screenshot can be patched later. The screenshot may not have a pirate base shown, it may have a spaceport being built, but it is Ecery still the same.



With construction queues, much because of large fleets repairing, we start building a medium spaceport at Ecery right away. We have "many" spaceports compared to colonies but that is mostly due to having few colonies not having colonized anything yet. And we have not captured much either. The location is not stellar. Near Sipan, I guess the influence circles will meet once this one is supplied with resources. It is also near the map edge, not very strategical spot for ship building. But we need a spaceport, a good colony gets an LSP for defense, and it is at least better placed than beate that is in a less crowded part of the upper left corner.

We also queue gas mines on fuel sources in the system, no less than 3 hydrogen ones, one of them having caslon too. A player only wants to experience a proper fuel shortage once, I have had mine ages ago...

Sipan fleet heads for repair of its single damaged ship, and to maybe pick up some cruisers, and battle 3 is present to babysit the colony and the spaceport build.

2164.04.07 We realize that battle 2 is ready at the capital, and it solves all our unmentioned woes involving the Crusher 1 fleet babysitting Najarca 1, and that needs to both repair and refuel.

2165.07.11 We remember about troops. We garrison the 13 troops at Ecery that are not armored or special forces. This colony should be good, and should have proper defenses.

We spot the scary looking pirate capital ship with the long range scanner that pops up at Ecery spaceport. And while drooling over systems that could become ours when the influence circle expands, we notice what looks like the Phantom Pirate base in a system overview. And the capital ship looks like the Phantom pirate design. And the fleet that attacked a mine quite some time ago was called Phantom Fleet. We will argue with ourselves if we will visit that system, because the Phantom Bases should give a lot of tech if killed. But we did not really spot it, and more tech could not be for our own best...

We tell Invasion fleet to "load troops", and then send the invasion fleet leader to Sipan. The chickens will follow mommy there, and transports will first head for different colonies scooping up the troops not garrisoned.

It is 2165.07.23, and we are getting things under control.

Status

It is time to distribute some cruisers, and to focus on whipping some pirate butt again. Too bad we don't know where the lone daggers are. They used to attack with 12 ship fleets. Now diplomacy reports them as having 10 ships in total. They are a spent force, but still around. We know of a gas mine of theirs (in the capital system of the small mortalen empire next doors), maybe they have no base? Just a gas mine? Pirates seem to like to put a base "far away", though.

Pirates are still around, but attacks are much weaker, and less frequent. The one featured attack from the Sinister Invaders was the only major one, apart from that a lot of single or trio pirate ships were killed at Najarca, some at Pantulumen.

We have yet to colonize, we are probably getting closer. We do not have more than 4 or so decent targets, all on our territory (one in the newly conquered system).

Some "why"s

An intention in this AAR is to say what I do as main choices, and why I do that. think I sometimes forget to say this, so a bit about why I did things...

First: Why suffer under AI automation? Because I choose to. I could just queue/switch to the most needed research techs when I feel the need for them.

On pirates: My understanding of pirate AI, is that they have some sort of "value" on target. Possibly a measure of "strength" of target too. And they have an idea of their own power, and their fleet's power.

Early on they crawl over ill defended colonies. The colonies are small, weak, and the pirates have "control" that is not shown. They try to keep and raise control with raids and presence. This makes colonies juicy targets, and mines in systems outside colonies are often left alone. They either have not time for those targets, or they do not know about the mines. Or both. Any ship in a system will usually by default attack "enemy stuff" in the system. This will kill any mine in a system camped by pirates, even if it is not a pirate priority.

When pirates feel weaker, or the colonies are stronger/better defended, they seem to turn on the mines in the lack of other targets.

I had Arexie and Dhayu 3 as weak colonies. Dhayu 3 was smaller, and weaker, and the one more raided. Many pirate groups did raid it, they all had some "control" over it. Arexie may have been further away, and stronger, thus a less interesting target. The lone dagger raided it, they had control. There were also a shortage of near pirate bases to the north. The Grim Guild may have had other preferred targets (like the independent Beate that I took from them). And the AI spam weak colonies like crazy, lots of targets for them to the north...

Recently I grabbed the pirate colony and independent near home. The pirate colony is my new weakest colony, I expect it to be raided. The independent (Najarca) was camped by pirates as independent, they had some control, and I expected them to revisit. Also, any ship with a refuel mission on Najarca before conquest (or any move to order) will keep that order even if I capture it (and turn away on arrival if they lack refueling rights). Newly captured colonies do see some traffic from the old owners after capture. Thus, I kept the somewhat damaged Crusher 1 at Najarca, and moved Battle 4 to Pantulumen where the weak colony is. To kill off any visitors, and battle 2 that was originally there needed repair.

Why take Pantulumen colony at that time? It was lone dagger controlled, we wanted them gone from our area. Why take Najarca? I thought I could handle it, and it has a nice Dhayut population that can recruit dhayut troopers. And I do want to expand, after all...

Then the new colony at the top. Why send Sipan Fleet? Because there could be many visitors, a spaceport, many pirate ships. This is a strong fleet, the nearest fleet, and can do the job. Why also send Battle 3? In a small part because if they are "lone dagger light" up there sipan fleet could take a lot of small damage. Two fleets could switch between guarding and repairing at Sipan. But also because I want a fleet there for a long haul, and Sipan fleet is full of destroyers and frigates, and should have them exchanged for cruisers sooner rather than later. Battle 3 has cruisers, and does not need to visit a spaceport or "reinforcement territory" anytime soon. Sipan fleet is also a better candidate to bust that large pirate spaceport near Sipan, and having some destroyers destroyed in the process is not all bad at this time.

Why not send Battle 3 alone to take that independent? Because the ships were new. Some may have low shields just getting out of yards, some may still be near the capital just having exited the yards, I did not bother to check if they were ready and all present, so I just sent them after the other fleet. I gave a refuel order (to happen at sipan spaceport) first.

Why leave all the normal troops of Invasion as garrison? Dhayut and Mortalen troops are strong, I want a strong garrison (since the colony is far from home and valuable). The colony has Securan and Atuuk, they are space hippies and weak creatures respectively, their troops are less power for money. And invasion did not "drop" more than 12 or so normal troops there (I think some transports may never have made it that far).

About invasion fleet and its leader: The only important feature of the leader, is that he does not have an ability to carry troops, and that is is not too easily killed. If parked in a "quiet" spot, it is easy to see the ships present. As long as there are troops to load somewhere, giving the fleet load order, should send the troop transports away. Any fleet ship "done" with an order move to leader.

So, watching the invasion fleet leader. Any ship that stay after "load troops" are full and can be use for invading things. Ships returning has completed its load order, and should have at least some troops. If they only got a few, consider giving the ship itself a "load order". Queuing (or prefacing) refuel may be needed too, as running back an forth a lot makes them burn fuel. My favorite spot for an invasion fleet leader is near the area of action, at the star in a system where I have a deployed resupply ship. Or at a planet not being the one where the resupply ship is deployed. A quiet spot, near a fuel source, near the action.

Screens



As usual, pirate bases. Our lovely red has presence in the north. That circle ought to expand to the size of our other large ones as the colony receives resources.

Next up is probably one of the bases near Sipan (northerly big circle, two bases on right edge of circle), and the independent controlled by that faction which is the dark circle in the influence area.

A secondary logical target is the weak-ish independent with a large spaceport in system on the left edge, SW of our area. Not far away at all on the scale of the distance in our empire.

The NW bases could be attacked, they had just 1 capital ship when checked. And they have attacked us not that long ago (one mine lost).



Numbers are trade amounts, and it is logical that we trade with the nearby empires. The blues probably supply Sipan in the north (a guess). The dark green Atuuk maybe find stuff to buy at Sipan? Another guess. It is possible to watch the goings at spaceports, and see if goods fly in or out on the empire freighters in the area. And if foreign power has much reserved on for instance Sipan 4.

Huge trade with the Haakonish. They trade loros fruit with us, we are happy to pay.



Ecery will be another Beate, given some time.
135 culture/development (C) is the sign of a colony with enough luxuries, and a supply of an ultrarare. We got loros fruit. Ecery lagging badly here is why revenue is so low.

Pantulumen 2 did rise fast. Hm, that colony has a lot of weird **** in cargo, including a colonization module. Some past owner has tried build a colony ship, or something. Being a former pirate "capital" it has a crazy store of hydrogen (271k) and lots of stuff in general.



Lots of military ships. A few new defensive bases (1 for each colony, 2 on arexie, none at Ecery yet). A new spaceport going up at the new colony, it will be large with time.

2 Other bases are two monitoring stations that are complete. Their spotting range looks pitiful.

Way many military ships for an empire this size, actually. Lots of unassigned and possibly not complete cruisers. We have both the destroyers to fill the fleets, and the cruisers that replace them.



This shows that if you just keep at buying cruisers long enough, it will eventually bring down the cashflow. We are waiting for Ecery to rescue ue ;-) Even with a small negative cashflow, the bonus income would keep some net income.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 32
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/4/2014 1:43:19 PM   
Efaferal

 

Posts: 45
Joined: 6/4/2014
Status: offline
This is a great AAR thread.
I love the irony that pissing off the pirates in the beginning actually caused your income to increase because the civvies were buying more ships.

Also, great to see someone playing despite having so many weaknesses, taking losses, recovering, then counter attacking. More realistic than just dominating in every respect from the beginning.


(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 33
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/4/2014 5:00:47 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
I am not sure if it actually helped my income much :) But in theory it could have.

I love it when the game gives a nice challenge that is not scripted. I had maybe my favorite war in my Yor AAR posted here, a proper push that were pushed back... If you want to find old posts you have to twiddle a filter at the top of the forum that limit things to showing threads from the past year only.

(in reply to Efaferal)
Post #: 34
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/4/2014 7:44:58 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
More independents?

The current plan is to hit the pirate colony and their large spaceport around Sipan. And after that focus on the pirate spaceport and colony SW of the home bases. It removes nearby pirates, and gives a decent and a rather crap colony.

First, some maintenance.

6 recently built, automated and unfleeted troop transports to invasion fleet.

25 fueled cruisers from Construction Fleet to a separate temporary fleet to be included in Crusher 1.

25 cruisers with about 10 unfinised to a tmp fleet, told to move to move to Sipan to become members of Sipan fleet.

All frigates and destroyrs from Crusher 1 to Construction, then the tmp fleet cruisers to Crusher 1. Repair order on Crusher due to damaged carriers in Najarca (a battle fleet is there to watch the colony).

This gives

3 Battle fleets (2, 3, 4) with 18 ships, 14 cruisers, 4 carriers.
1 Crusher with 31 ships, 25 cruisers, 6 carriers.
25 cruisers in a fleet heading for Sipan fleet
Sipan Fleet with 6 carriers and 37 ships in total until reconfigured.

15 undamaged ships in construction (frigates and destroyers) for X Pantulumen. 15 other ships for X Najarca. A bit extra strength since these are expected to have some visitors.

1 destroyer to buff X Atuuko to 10. Not sure if we messed up or lost one.

37 ships left in Construction, not bothering to send any of them to Sipan or Ecery.

Sipan Fleet and Invasion are both headed for sipan. Sipan fleet has some damaged ships to fix. No immediate action in the south.

Action

2165.07.24 and life goes on

We find a fleet X Sipan sitting with two damaged in the capital system. We tell them to repair, set their home base, and queue them to go home. This one was created and forgotten.

2165.09.19 Curious, and alerted by an attack on a civilian, we look into the capital of the former mortalen independent next door. There is another independent colony in this capital system. We discover the expected lone dagger mine, but also a couple of warships and a constructor of the Najarca Council



The two capital ships and 3 destroyers of Construction forms a small fleet and goes on a hunt. Will they be there in time to catch the constructor? Keep in mind, the capitals are much slower than our own ships.

Lots of military ships moving around can be seen in the picture. Construction tags ships formerly from Crusher 1 heading back for repairs and fuel.



Sipan Fleet launces to the star of the system with the large pirate spaceport. We can see the colony system of the pirates where we recently busted 3 spaceports. The other flag is
a small spaceport of the lone trade interstellar, we will see if we hit that after the colony visit.



2165.10.23 _Will see_? The Lone trade attack a gas mine in Sipan using a rather weak probably alien capital ship. Sipan fleet changes target to attack on the lone trade spaceport. It will probably hurt less than the large one and is taken first.

Poor timing on those pirates...

Go Raider 1, the defenders at Sipan. They managed to down shields and damage the capital ship before it jumped away. The mine was lost. We queue a rebuild of the lost fuel mine. Raider 1 is told to fetch a deserved repair.



On arrival Sipan Fleet finds the spaceport already low on shields, and a few ships are present. Neither fact really matter as they go to action.

Destroying the mine makes a destroyer appear in the Capital system, which explodes and ends up with a kaltor spawning on a very much attacked mining base there.

Sipan fleet waits for the pirate capital ship and friends that the long range scanner at Sipan hinted at were heading to the location of the base they just busted.

Meanwhile the construction ship hunting force seems to have a destroyer land way early, but the construction ship is gone. They proceed to the system to kill any pirate ships (Najarcan) and bust the lone dagger mine if still there.

2166.01.05 We get a message that Fierce Moon Minerals raided and got away with some resources at Pantulumen 2. As we look at the colony we see Battle 4 destroying the pirate ships, but the pirates are fast, and launch bording parties from a distance.

The capital ship fleet finds some Najarcan camping the independent, and that the Najarcan has captured the mine. They attack the mine. We ponder that if the Mortalu Supremacy is unable to keep pirates out of its capital system, maybe we should take over its running? The other independent is still "free" as well.

After killing some najarcan, and taking some damage, the small capital ship fleet heads back to repair.

2166.02.24 Sipan fleet is tired of waiting, and head for their original target system. On arrival they find a few ships around the spaceport, and get attack order on the spaceport itself.



The normal attack pattern is established


And the frigates and destroyers dive in with extra fury as they sense this may be their last spaceport attack.

2166.04.03 We celebrate as some silly hyperdeny research is finished, and even larger shipyards becomes the research focus.

For many ships, the pirate spaceport was indeed the last battle. 4 ships lacking torpedoes are also scrapped. 23 survivors (out of 37?) head for the star of the colony systme, a bit careful in case of a spaceport at the colony. Sending one damaged frigate with no fuel for repair and to Construction fleet, they are down to 22.

At arrival they find some Savage Storm League ships (system guys) battling ships of the Alzuk Authority (who used to have a spaceport here). At the colony they see a construction ship of the clan, and attack it.

2 invasion fleet transports with troops have attack order, while the invasion fleet leader get move order to have the rest follow in case more is needed. Invading should not be a problem, removing the pirate facility could be.

The construction ship was an easy kill, it appear to be being built at the colony.

The colony quickly falls, and a battle starts to rid it of the pirate structures. 671 vs 168 at start and looking easy enough. Not waiting, invasion fleet moves to the capital spaceport.

The 25 cruisers of 29th fleet, intended for Sipan fleet, is at sipan and refuels with queued order to move to our new conquest Dilla 3



Dilla 3 is of mediocre quality, and may have a low maximum population considering there is a lot of fast breeding Atuuk (they should have had time to max it out). Also, we inherit a shortage.

The small ships of Sipan fleet, 17 in number, is split into a new fleet and get repair order. The cruisers join Sipan fleet which is short a carrier and has one carrier damaged. Sipan Fleet is renamed Crusher 6 (the numbers in my main fleet names are my keyboard shortcut, and I am used to a powerful fleet 6 by now).

2166.10.30 Sinister Invaders board a mining station, and bump themselves on the hit list. Their closest spaceport is a large one, and the system has a crap mortalen colony that they control.

A gift of 1500 credits for the mortalen supremacy? Are the advisors mad? We rather help them with their incompetent government.

We spot another hidden pirate base on Ecery (they already rebuilt one). We must pay more attention... attack!

Shopping: Defensive base for Dilla 3, a carrier for Crusher 6. Retrofit to large at Ecery spaceport. Troop recruitment for more troops to invasion fleet.

2166.12.22 A civilan ship screaming for help confirm Najarcan presence in the Mortalu System. The capital spaceport is very weak, they have 11 troops at 395 strength with a 10% planet bonus. Invasion fleet before new troops are lifted has 13 inf, 12 armor, and 5 special forces at 931 strength.

2167.01.27. A construction ship of dread mining picked the wrong system for construction - Dilla. Crusher 6 is in the system, and cruisers and fighters easily finish it off with no manual intervention.

2167.02.13: We research planetary governance and can place a regional capital to reduce corruption. We guess it goes to sipan and check corruption levels. Sipan 4: 51%, Beate 44%. Ecery 62%. Facility building where this is included, is AI controlled.

We check diplomacy on Mortalen Supremacy. They have a defense pact with the Ackdarian Xanath alliance. The Xanath has two other wars. We are stuffed with ships and not very worried. The galaxy map at the end of last update is true on the light blue Xanath, at least when it comes to the nearest colonies.

We look for the warning "Get your act together and build a military to clear the system of pirates", but fail to find it. They have 437 military strength. We declare War.

The first and only Mortalen Supremacy War

2167.03.01 Crusher 1 at our capital launch for their capital, Edop. While the Mortalen Supremacy has 437 military power, Crusher 1 has 5244.

Once Crusher 1 has a head start, Invasion fleet leader heads for the Mortalu star. The transports are mostly still refueling at the capital spaceport. Some transports are empty hinting at more troop carrying capacity than ungarrisoned troops.

2164.01.10 The Xanath end one war (with Tefnyl Hive), they still have MDP with mortalen supremacy. They have not declared war.

2167.05.03 We complete a region capital at Sipan 4. New corruption check. Sipan 4 has 0%. Beate 44%, Ecery 40% Maybe ecery dropped due this, but it could be less pirate influence and more development too (did not take note of development, but busted a pirate facility). Sipan 4 revenue skyrockets.



The Najarcan capital ship and others present will probably not influence the outcome for the weak mortalen spaceport.



With the spaceport down, Crusher 1 is told to focus on the Najarcan capital ship. One cruiser is a bit far ahead and is in serious trouble.

We think the capital died and did not jump, but we are not quite sure. The cruiser had 22 damaged, but is operational. Crusher 1 hunts down anything hostile in the system.

Shock and horror! Research department has researched entertainment systems. After a mere 67 years? Incredible!

2167.07.29 As transports with 30 troops has landed at the star of the system, Invasion fleet is told to attack the Mortalen Supremacy capital of Edop.

There is nothing to prevent them in dropping their love. Something did, however, prevent the photographer in getting images back to the capital.



If you have a fair fight, you did something wrong.
Still no Xanath war, still that MDP between them.

2167.10.14 We have taken Edop, the Mortalen Supremacy is no more.

Invasion fleet is told to load troops, hopefully most from Edop where we garrison two intenting to recruit more once we have some overview. Mortalen troops are not bad.



When we first found these independents in the early days of space exploration, we though "Nice, but needs population, but why did we grab that stupid Dhayu 3 colony?". Now it has some population. We start to build a defensive base on top of it.

The first two transports that exit from loading at Edop are told to attack the independent, Grau. It has two mortalen troops defending.

An act of magic!



As the first troop transport drops its troops, the colony transforms into the capital of the Great Mortalu Territory and a spaceport appears. With troops in combat, we immedately tell all ships in the system to attack the colony, and declare war.

Being a bit down on strength, the landing troops could actually manage with only two defenders. A lot of the strength is from population, but when the last troop dies, they surrender.

2168.01.08. We have taken over Grau.

We immediately give invasion a new "load" order, garrison 2 troops, recruit about 6 on each of the two mortalen colonies, and garrisons the new builds. We build a defensive base on top of Grau as well.

Entertainment module? Retrofit the spaceports. Medical is soon done so waiting a tad would have been better.



Nothing at all wrong with Grau, hopefully it has room for a lot more. These two circle the same resourceless gas giant.

Hm, issues with spaceport retrofits, confusing. Mixed with the shock of being exposed to more magic than the average anomaly, this calls for a break to recover.

It is 2168.02.14, and we got distracted from our intended pirate target.

Status

The plan was to go for the pirate thing in SW, but I got annoyed at the pirate haven nearby.

The magic trick of the independent was annoying as well, but did not relly matter apart from maybe me taking a reputation hit for the war declaration. The troops were in combat by the time I paused the game.

Two good colonies were taken, not great colonies like the 3 big independents taken, but good.



The world is prettier with a bigger red blob. We can see the new Dila 3 off Sipan. The new mortalen colonies are in the system to the lower right.



We shortened the list by one. One that probably was held back by the independent that drew in pirates.

The stats are worrysome, those northern independents are too good. Sipan 4 is second on the best colony list. Beate is 5th. Sollost 2 is 8th.

We are way ahead in population. 3 times more than the second, or something like that.
But in the middle of the pack in number of colonies. There is a bunch of former independents with just 1 or 2 colonies.
Twice the economy of the Haakonish that are second.
Firepower is leading, but not with that kind of margin. Using the short range weapons probably boosts firepower a bit compared to the long range ones.



Sipan 4 reveals the monster hidden by corruption until now.

I noticed the new pirate facility at Dilla 3, and started an attack.
Grau and Edop should be among the better colonies, it all depends on maximum population level. Both need some resources to max out development.
Ecery is getting there.

And even the capital is looking quite good now!



A few more defensive bases, one at each colony. 1 escort, 3 frigates and 1 destroyer were inhereted from one of the mortalen empires, they are sent to retire.



With the regional capital, things are even more relaxed. Cashflow was not that great at the last update.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 35
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/4/2014 7:45:59 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
I really worry about the power of the economy and the effect of those independents the AI is too stupid to grab hold of.

Maybe I should figure out what the largest military defense pact is, and launch at that one, or something? Or just bust some pirate ass, and hope that the others will catch up in population?

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 36
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/5/2014 1:35:05 AM   
Mark Wilkins

 

Posts: 1
Joined: 6/5/2014
Status: offline
Sir, your AAR's are awesome please keep doing them.
Seeing different play styles (and using automation, wow) is very inspiring.
I am a full manual player but this is inspiring me to try alternatives.
Your articulation of strategy and humour are also appreciated.


(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 37
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/6/2014 12:05:05 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
Strategizing

Or something like that. For now a pirate hunt is probably still the best idea. Pirate attacks do happen, still.

First. At this time the 1.9.5.2 beta patch is available, which should have among other more AI construction yards on large spaceports. I am not patching for this AAR, and suffer the problem of spaceport capacity.

At the start it was very handy to show a screenshot of the "local area". the problem with expanding a bit, is that the local area becomes awfully large, and does not fit that well in an image in forum thread, if at all. And there is a limit to the zoom range on the map as well. So lets try a few shots of various areas.

There are no known pirate bases between the "core area" and Sipan/Atuuko as can be seen on the last galaxy map. Which does not rule out there being one. There is a few in the very north.



This is the SW part.

We can see the light long range scanner fields. The capital, and two above trying to cover some approaches. One left of the capital, trying to cover the gas fields to the west. That northernmost gas cloud not covered has no resource, anyways.

One in the south tries to watch a gas cloud where various empires have constructors roaming.
For the pirates, as numbered in the image.

1: Left. The pink Sinister Spaceways. The upper one is a large spaceport and a colony. Their home spaceport, however, is most likely the one at the left edge in the corner. 1 mine busted, probably by a single ship (or two) from that upper colony/spaceport system.

2: A small spaceport of the Talfagleu Army. I have not felt them in the south, they are from the North where we have had our battles. We have been more annoying to them than them to us though, taking Ecery from them.

3. A spaceport by Fire Bandits, they have core areas further east. I have not, as far as I know, ever noticed any ship of theirs.

4: Ikoriun Ravagers. They have been raiding Dhayhu 3 in the past. The right of the two is the large spaceport. They are a bit similar in logo to the 5s.

5: Sinister Outlaws. I recognize them as annoying. The left 5 is a colony, which is actually quite nice. 11M Sluken, 85%, nice strategic resources. A nice 27% development bonus from ruin.

None of these have been very annoying lately.



This shows the eastern area, Pantulumen is just off the screen next to Najarca, the blue fuel symbol (pantulumen system) can be seen at the edge of the image.

Writing an AAR can be nice in that there are notes in what pirate clans have been active...

1: In the north is a Najarcan colony, with a Sinister Spaceways (1s in the last image) small spaceport. Najarcans did visit the north a while ago. From here? The colony has a nice 88% quality, but only 767M inhabitants, mostly humans.

2: Sinister Invaders have 3 spaceports pretty close to each other. The left one is the large spaceport, and in the system they got a very poor quality mortalen colony (51%). They have in recent times attacked mining stations, and fielded a decent raid attempt at Pantulumen 2.

3: A mess of a system. It is owned by Securan Harmony, but the Tefnyl Bandits are building hidden network, and will take control if completed. The Tefnyl Bandits have been fought near Sapila, but are from further south. They have a small spaceport in the system.

Dread mining also has a small spaceport in the same system, we do not remember them as very annoying at all.

4: Fierce Moon Minerals. A colony near all the 2s, and some flags at the lower right. They have raided Pantulumen 2, and attacked mines in the capital system. The spaceports are far away, did they start out at that colony? Or another base? The colony is 70% with 874M mixed, majority Dhayut.

5: Hidden Claw Industries. Far away, not on my hit list, currently.



The south-eastern area. The green top left is in the first image as well. The Pink and blue colony at top is in the previous image.

1: The Najarca Council has a medium spaceport. This was our "home crew". It is 2 sectors from Mortalu, though, and we have only had visits in Arexxie some time ago. They did not come from here. We also saw them when conquering Mortalu, those may have come from here.

2: Cruel Claw Pillagers. The lower spaceport is large, the others small. A search in the AAR tells about them being present in Atuuko (Beate colony), and that we mopped a base of them closer to home at the time we hit the Lone Daggers. They probably don't bother us from here? Or?

3: Lone Trade Interstellar. We destroyed a spaceport attempt at them near Dhayu. They were the ones distracting us at our last pirate kill trip from Sipan by attacking a gas mine in Sipan. That is not anywhere near here.

4: Tefnyl bandits again, main area further south. Too far away to worry about.

I hope the pirate overview makes some sense to someone...

What to do?

The core of the latest pirate issues is the 3 Sinister Claw spaceports and the Fierce Moon colony to the east. The issue here is that it is quite a bit away, and do we really want a colony here? More than 2 sectors from Sollost, repair there would be a long trip, and repairs will in particular be needed if we run into railguns. Maybe build a spaceport in Mortalu? Kind of near the capital. Build a spaceport on the eastern 875M colony of dubious quality? It can be done, it may be a good idea, but it is a location ruling, not a colony in need of a spaceport.

The juicy colony south is quite of near home? The Dhayut would jump at it, I think I give the AI a chance to jump, at least for a while. Unless those guys suddenly attack something of ours.

The one at the left? It can wait. I am tired of trying to AAR simultaneous attacks on pirate spaceports. They always end up fighting at the same time.

Battle fleets are:

Battle 3 in the north. A proper fleet in the north is nice.
Crusher 6 is at Dila, the new colony near Sipan.
Battle 2 watches Pantulumen 2
Battle 4 watches Najarca 1
Crusher 1 is at Mortalu, with one damaged and reduced fuel levels.

Of course, there are those 10-15 ship destroyers and frigates fleets, but they are not going to stop a proper raid. We feel the strain. And we got 272K cash and 159K cashflow. And some steady bonus income.

A battle fleet of 14/4 costs 120k and has 17.5k maintenance. Lets take two! One to meet up at Sipan (to release Crusher 6), one to meet at the capital.

Soon we can say hello to Battle 5 and Battle 7. No specific care is taken about who is built where. They are based in the systems (capital and Sipan), and I make the fleet leaders a cruiser built in the target system. They won't be around for a while, though.

In another area? Colonize? Not just yet, pirates are still annoying, the capital is not full. And the targets are in our territory, so no one else will grab them.

Action

2168.02.17

Crusher 1 repair and refuel at the capital. Battle 2 move from Najarca (hopefully the less likely to be raided) to Grau in the Mortalu System. Grau was independent apart from a few seconds while the invasion raged. Edop was the Supremacy capital. Grau is likely to have some pirate influence on it, Edop not, and we assume pirate influence to increase the pirates eagerness to raid. Also, the Edop defensive base is much closer to completion.

Invasion fleet just started loading troops. The leader is moved to mortalu (if he ever had time to leave), since we are thinking of an eastwards motion for the colony of the annoying pirates.

And just as Crusher 1 left, the Fire Moon minerals drop by Grau with 3 ships. Crusher 1 is told to turn, battle 2 is not far off. The defensive base is just in its infancy as a build project. We have to micro manage to not have leader and transports of invasion fleet play heroes. They are manually sent towards a system a bit to the west.



The fire moon minerals, the spaceport with a construction ship retiring (like the former mortalen explorers also are), the too brave invasion members before leaving.

We had this idea "bust the spaceports of those other guys, then maybe invade". We are not sure about that order of action right now.



Soon they have visitors in the form of Battle 2 and Crusher 1. Crusher 1 is again told to repair and refuel. Or, they refuel at grau, and the damaged cruiser flies to repair all alone. We just have to make sure he is caught in the spaceport yards before bossing Crusher 1 with a fleet order again.

With a najarcan escort also visiting, it is clear that Grau will benefit from fleet presence. Luckily Grau has a healty 63K caslon supply, and casually refuel a couple of fleets just fine.



2168.05.14 And while a najarcan is shot at at grau, we see the alert of an attack at Dachsii 1 mining station. That is the Ecery system at the far north. This is the Phantom Fleet leader, the single capital ship (who's phantom base wer pretend to never have seen in a systems overview). Battle 3 is at guard in this system, and happened to be at the mine after a refuel. Bad circumstances for the pirate capital ship. It seems to have arrived at half shields as well.

The phantom fleet capital ship is no more.



2168.05.24 Then the sinister invaders attacks a mine in the Dhayu system. The strength of the defense fleet (10 ships) is not ideal at this time, it s not of Battle 3 quality. Those eastern pirate crews are really competing for our attention.

X Dhayu kill some, lose two and has 1 damaged. We transfer two healthy guys from Construction Fleet and send the single ship for repairs.

2168.08.07 Sinister Invaders also attack a mine in Jintawoe, SW of pantulumen. Moving up on the hit list.

We need more build capacity in central areas. A large spaceport is started at Edop in the Mortalu system. This spaceport will shine much more brightly than the puny one that was there while under Mortalen Supremacy rule. For now, the two damaged ships of crusher 1 and invasion are in the capital shipyards, after some finished cruises and stuff have been completed.

We notice the Sinister Invader at Jintawoe appear to aim for the closest colony/spaceport in the east. And we notice that a Najarcan destroyer does not last long under the combined fighter force of battle 2 and crusher 1 in Mortalu.



2168.09.01 Anyways. With 1 cruiser being repaired, Crusher 1 launches at Kurilea Outpust, the large spaceport of the Sinister Invaders. In a system with a crap mortalen inhabited colony. This will be a proper test for the crusher fleet setup of 25, eh 24 cruisers and 6 carriers (1 cruiser is in the shipyards at the capital).



At the same time, a Najarcan cruiser provides a target for Battle 2 gunnery practice at Grau. We can see its doom incoming (actually it took one more salvo, jumped a few ship lengths, and were finished by fighters).

With most of the ships for battle 5 and 7 built, Crusher 6 moves to Ecery to refuel and prepare to bust the local, northern, pirate presence.



Crusher 1 circles and begins to work on the Sinister Invader spaceport. The days of the fierce frigate assaults on such targets are over.



We see a hail of torpedoes and lots of fighters surround the spaceport, which has low shields considering that it is "large" (2900). They are indeed very low in that picture (0).

The station explodes, and we register Crusher 1 with 30 ships and 1 damaged. One cruiser lost? The damage is not that significant with 4/16 enhanced armor for the one hurt.

16 armor? did they not have 19? We have not retrofitted cruisers, new stuff is researched, they are not of identical designs. The "old" ones probably lack enhanced armor, for instance.

There is a poor colony in the system, but if we want to push the pirates back, we got to take it. There is also the one mentioned a bit further east. If we keep taking pirate colonies because we want to stop them from raiding us. Will we stop before reaching all map edges? Time will show. Invasion fleet has been told to move in.

And if we want battle fleets for:

1 at home
2 in the north (Sapila, Ercery)
2 to guard some near home (Pantulumen, Grau).
2 to guard two new colonies in the east (the two crap ones)

Our current 5 won't reach far. Not if we ignore the crushers.
204k credits, 145k cashflow. Lets spend 120K on Battle 8, and add an additional cruiser to refill crusher 1.

2168.12.03. the sinister invaders raid another mine near home.



Since they are so annoying, Crusher 1 decides it has time to bust a small spaceport, and still be back before Invasion's arrival. They just started from Mortalu (on the left). That may be a bit optimistc, but...

2169.01.10 Sinister Spaceways arrives to raid a mine at the capital system with an alien capital ship. That bumps that western colony/spaceport on the hit list. The new battle 5 were in attendance with local ships to finish it off. Battle 5 is all built, but maybe not all present. Battle 7 still lacks 3 ships.

Battle 5 is told to move to the soon to be captured colony in the east.



Crusher 1 is quick, but not that quick. As invasion lands with not a pirate in sight, and the small spaceport is dead, Crusher 1 moves to the Fierce Moon colony nearby to await for invasion fleet (after it has dropped some troops).

This shot, however has some bonus info. Light blue ships near Mortalu. Najarcan council, 7 ship fleet revealed on some clicking. Where do they come from? They are at a line from that spaceport flagged down right. The scanner revealing it is a sign that the new LSP at Edop is getting at least some systems online.

Battle 2 (who should watch Grau), gets a move order to the colony to help them recover from any unfortunate events that may have made them drift away.

We hope the pirates got some fuel on some of these colonies, because Crusher 1 needs fuel in order to bust that Najarcan spaceport in particular, and spaceports in general in that area. There are a few to pick from (two in the colony system NW of Crusher), for instance.

In other news, there are two green independents below Mortalu. There was only one at the pirate update at start. The AI empires struggle mightly with pirates, and the pirates has taken another one. That orange colony with the two pirate bases will probably turn pirate in some time too (the network is under construction).

Invasion fleet can see 1 troop, but more is needed to bust the pirate structures as well. 3 transports with about 10 troops and 3 armor attack, invasion leader moves to the same target as Crusher 1 fleet.

Meanwwhile Crusher 6 is ready and fueled at Ecery, and impatient to go. They get no orders, we blame AAR writing for their lack of attention.

Hm, the Najarcan appears to move very slowly towards Mortalu. Out of fuel? Or are their drives that slow?



The sorry excuse of a colony called Netoa. The troops immediately starts dismantling pirate structure, and we recruit some new mortalen troops to have as garrisons. It is a waste to garrison that junk with more than 1 troop, but we can't hand it to the pirates, right?

We spot 126k credits, and book another Battle fleet. Battle, eh 9? Cost up to 121.2K. Based at Edop to gather there, no construction yet at the spaceport, so a lead ship is made at random from one built at Sollost. It is named Dark Master. Fitting.

Crusher 1 find 2 sorry pirate ships as it lands at Sloen Van. Invasion arrives, and tell two transports of about 5 troops and 3 armor to attack. Invasion leader is heard asking headquarters "Any more pirate colonies around!?".

A sinister invader parks on top of netoa. battle 5 is incoming from various direction (some were on their way to the capital from the north).

We notice crusher 6 heading back to Sipan to refuel. We wonder of it was lack of fuel, or an old feature on what is calculated as "closest" fuel source when queuing orders. Fuel situation at Ecery seems OK, and there is also lots of fuel on the gas mine.

Invasion leader back to Mortalu system.



Sloes van 6 is mediocre or worse at 70% quality, but a 17% colony development bonus and nice resources makes it respectable. The population is way low, but maybe some peace and quiet under Dhayut rule will help it attract migrants? We are not picky, our enslavement can handle any alien visitors.

Crusher 1 wants to go all back to Mortalu for fuel. We choose to stay to guard a new medium spaceport build at Sloes Van 6. It will help as an operational stop away from home, but the build could take a while unless the pirates stockpiled more other resources than fuel. (130 caslon, 357 steel, 9 lead - they did not).

Kurilea, where Netoa is, has two good gas giants for fuel, but how to keep the mines alive? Sloes Van has many resources and is a nice mining system, but no caslon. There are a couple of caslon sources in our new territory though, one of them has a pirate base on top of it.

Najarca system seems quiet enough, and we hit the pirates hard with the last attacks, we send Battle 4 sitting there to Sloes Van 6. Or was it battle 4? That will soon do something else starting from Pantulumen. Confusion rages as the army press office.



2159.06.03 Meanwhile, in the north. We get messages about ships wanting to refuel, and discover 6 new ships from Ecery spaceport out of fuel heading south. We tell them to refuel, and they head for the single caslon source mine the system. This makes us hunt for further fuel locations (and poke the civilians for more caslon transport). We only find caslon at a star to the south, marked with the selection circle. No less than 3 caslon sources. And a system overview that hints at this being the Phantom Pirate Base (the fleet is dead, though). I guess we will spot them after all, as a construction ship heads there.

We can see crusher 6 heading north, reserving lots of fuel (all 9k reserved) sending the new ships away on empty stomachs. The light blue ships seen crossing the scanner are stressful, but they are not Najarcan pirates, they are Free Talfegleu Utopia ships travelling to and from their regional capital system to the left.



And at the same time, in our south, Battle 4 figures that with all the pirate bashing, Pantulumen is maybe OK? At least we can figure out if the defensive fleet is up to the task. And the defensive base. But we won't learn that if Battle 4 kill all that get close, do we?

They head for a pirate colony to the south. When we over extend by grabbing crap ones in the east, we can grab a nice one in the south too. The one just south of it is not bad either, actually. Apart from Mortalu, maybe we can conquer most of the galaxy just by chasing pirates?

We can see a string of invasion fleet ships heading for Mortalu. A couple of ships are told to drive-by-load at Netoa as the pirate battle there ends.



We see cruel claw pillagers flying over the scanners around the capital, heading SE. Where are they travelling from? They have not bothered us, whatever they did. The most likely candidate is a hydrogen source in a system NW of Atuuko. But that does not fit all their trajectories, some appear to come from systems in an area where we have mines in all of the systems? Confusing. The candidate system for a base at a hydrogen source is circled at the top. It fits the two to the right, but the two two lower ones moving to the SE?

Their destinations could be their bases that are south of our new colonies.

The joy of watching scanners. Too bad the game is to busy to have fun watching civilian traffic. We blame the pirates for that! And with 150k cash we feel the urge for another Battle fleet. 10 battle fleets? Are you crazy? No way, we only have 9 letters for them (0 is invasion fleet).

2169.07.26 Edop Spaceport is ready to serve the empire. Maybe this may draw some load from the fuel mines in the north? By building less ships there? Since we refuse to buy another battle fleet, this may be a minor point.

As Battle 4 is near its southern target system, invasion is told to refuel, and the leader (with good fuel levels) heads to the colony as well.

Phew, with Crusher 6 refueled there is (some) fuel at Ecery. Fuel for the next cruisers and carriers being completed.

On Arrival, Battle 4 finds the usual weakly defended pirate colony, but also a small spaceport of the Hidden Claw Industries on a gas giant in the system. First, it proves that pirates set up on hydrogen sources (which the possible pirate site north of Atuuko also was), and secondly, they may not have bothered us, but a pirate spaceport in our future system? For real?



They tried to be nasty with something looking like gravtion beams, but no damage taken. On our guys, that is.

"What? Can't queue gas mine in the system? What you mean other empire's territory?". The game has no ability to predict the short term future, most if not all of invasion fleet is just outside.

And: "Hello? Research department? One more improvement in resource sensors? Our two explorers stopped doing anything _years_ ago". (it leads to ship scanning, though).



2169.10.07: the joy of building structures at the frontier worlds. The photo shoot alerts us to a pirate facility being built, and the busters are summoned. A quick check of the colony list give show no signs of other pirate structures at this time.

Hello? Invasion fleet? Why are you not at the leader, but busy capturing a hapless pirate at Mortalu? A short delay in the plans of conquering that colony.

Why is Crusher 6 moving south? To Sloes Van 6? Probably because Crusher 1 is there and we fumbled. Noticing a construction ship heading to Ecery to pick up stuff to build a mining station in Thyfirra system, we ask them to refuel (default sipan), since we have a hunch we will discover a bowl of goodies rather soon.

2169.12.18: How long does a pirate escort attacking Netoa last vs the fighters of Battle 5? Nope, it doesn't.



As the transports of invasion has arrived in the south. Two are told to attack (5-6 troops and 3 armor), and Battle 4 heads one step south to the next colony.



It appears the phantoms have found themselves an alien capital. It is powerful, and leader of Phantom Fleet. Powerful alien ships are not what they once were, though. At least not in the Presence of Battle 3. Alien capital dead, the mine takes some shield damage.



Battle 4 are almost happy to find a medium spaceport to attack as they land in the next system, but appear a tad disorganized. They landed at the star, and had attack order, and should do better than this at circling the target. Two ships lightly damaged.

Invasion is not far behind, 3 partly full transports drop their goods. Battle 9 (new) moves to the previous colony taken. When troops have landed, Invasion gets load order and leader moves to mortalu. They won't load at the new colonies in the south, though, since there is a pirate battle raging at both of them. And with the leader move, will the transports manage to follow him this time, or find some other stupid ship to try to capture on own initiative?



Again fighting pirates. Low population, a couple of luxuries, OK quality. An ice world, but the population minority is mostly Dhayut. The natives are probably Naxxilian but it is only 50M of them working in our icy mines. Why "only 50", because if the population was significant (over 100M or 500M), we could use them to colonize ice worlds. Not that we are colonizing anything, but...

2170.04.20: With invasion just having launched to load troops, Crusher 1 babysitting a medium spaceport build while lowish on fuel, and Crusher 6 being impatient to bust some powerful ass, it is time for status.

Status

I find invasion sprees like this one rather tiresome and after a while one gets a bit disorganized. With pirate enemies, there is no peace to be had, though. At war, I typically end up with grabbing 3-5 colonies at a time due to this. Unless I decide to clear a "distinct area" or an entire empire.

The southern move was totally optional, they have not bothered us for quite a while. But after grabbing the questionable stuff in the east to push pirates back, getting a good one was just fair.

I started a medium spaceport in the far east, I am a bit afraid it could bite me in having the build order screen ask it to build a cruiser it struggles with completing due to lacking resources. I hope the spaceport will be some extra draw for fuel for my fleets there, and I have a couple of damaged cruisers in the area that could use a repair. I expect more eastern damage in the future as well, as we are probably not done bashing pirates. There is a couple of fuel sources in our small, new, territory there. One of them has a pirate base on top of it.

Since the spaceport build was likely to struggle, I have not booked at defensive base for the other colony over there (netoa). I don't want to start that build until after the spaceport is complete, at least, there is no use in spamming builds in an area with a local resource shortage.

In the north, if the Thirfyrra system contains what I think it does, the constructor aiming for Thyrfirrra 8 may be happy that the one heading for no 9 is a bit ahead. The base is probably at Thyrfirra 8, a nice dual fuel gas giant.

Oh, and I noticed that there is no fleet at Dila system. 17 ships formerly of Sipan fleet was at Sipan, and was told to be X Dila and to move there. 17 ships is maybe a bit too many, but whatever.



Again, pirates shown. The Thirfyrra system where the possibly doomed constructor is heading, is right south of the northern (red) circle of influence. The closest site with some caslon sources to that colony, and there is a lot of fuel to be had in that system.

We can see that Edop is now the hub in an empire that it never was in incompetent Mortalen Supremacy hands. Two new colonies to the south, two new to the east. The two eastern ones does not exactly bring in a lot of systems (with resources) to our control. The pirates in the eastern red is the last of the 3 bases of the annoying Sinister Invaders. But we struggle a bit with fuel over there.

Hm, order the new Battle 8 at the capital to move to Netoa, the left of the two western, where battle 5 sit with 1 damaged at decent fuel. That colony needs some cover, and battle 5 could bust that base. Or battle 8 could, or something.

The days when the capital, Arexxie (north of it) and Dhayu 3 (SE linked to Etau) was the empire seems so far away. We were poor, and struggling to raise ships for a fightback. Now it is "another powerful fleet maybe? Nah, we have no shortcut key for them". These "many" pirates lead to a lot of protection need if one wants to limit raids, though. And they may have screwed the AI empires quite badly as they fail a lot in keeping control of their small ones. And in busting pirate bases, even if I think one northern one may have disappeared.

We have found a new pirate base south of Sipan. B'cnus Network, they have one known base at the eastern quameno areas, and are probably from that part. They have not bothered us.



I am still not paying attention to diplomacy, and fail to pay notice to some suggestions involving free trade, trade sanctions, or whatever. We took over some sluken though, we are getting closer to the potentially friendly tefnyl hive.

I think the Free Talfagleu Utopia used to look strong, not so much now, and not just because we dominate. The Xanath are on the rise, I think.

Securan Harmony is at war with Haakonish and Mortalen. They appear to spank the space defenses of the Mortalen Capital, which lacks a spaceport. The Mortalen are weak, hurt by our "many pirates, nearby", meaning many started nearby them as well?

The Mortalen are not fond of us, envying and complaining of us trespassing. Our mine is not trespassing in their system, it is their influence circle trespassing on our mine. Silly reptiles.



Hm, why has Ecery dropped from 135 development? It got Loros, so a shortage of luxuries? The civilians need to get their act together.

Edop and Grau lacks Loros fruit, but they are getting there. Dila 3, the former pirate colony SE of Sipan, is well into "profitable" territory.

Astermai will be really nice (but not Sipan 4 nice), Murlilea 2 needs population. Sloes Van 6 needs population and will give some small income. And say hello to Netoa, if we get one more colony you are unlikely to ever see it on this screen again.



12 construction ships, means two former Mortalen ones fled when heading for retirement. We had 10. And should probably get a few more since the AI is not too efficient at deploying them.

Lots of cruisers... And we can afford them.



We could of course make a custom trading port for the colonies of no spaceport to bring the now available resort and medical components. Which would boost happiness, allowing us to tax a bit harder. But why bother?

With the 17 frigates/destroyers heading off to be the Dila defense for just now, we actually need some ships to defend our new stuff in the south. Unless we intend to keep battle fleets parked there into eternity. The 17 ship or whatever construction fleet is handy as pirates do drop by the capital system mines now and then, and the local defense fleet can use the help.

We have the two pirate capital ships, we could probably just retire them. But their hyper denys are nice in making sure the annoying pirates that attack capital system mines get nowhere and dies.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 38
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/7/2014 11:06:51 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
Operation pirate bash continued

As usual, the game is saved, status written, and unpaused at the next part. Right now, troop transports took off after invading two southern pirate colonies, and we try to build a medium spaceport in the east. It is has 91 unbuilt components, and there is a shortage on the colony.

In other news, we got LargeScale construction 85% complete, it will give a build size of 500 for ships. We look forward to larger and more complete cruisers. Maybe even some small capitals with a bit different loadout (hyper deny?). We are not looking forward to trying to retrofit all the fleets in some style.

2170.04.21. We are off, and we think we may focus on the southern pirate spaceports in general, and maybe that western colony/spaceport of the Sinister Spaceways in particular. But the guys around or two new eastern colonies may be grumpy too. The Crusher 1 fleet that is created for large spaceport busting, is low-ish on fuel and guarding our eastern spaceport build.

2170.04.24 Murillea 2 in the south got fuel. Battle 4 appreciate it. Not just any small caslon store either, 408K.

With the eastern fuel shortage, a resupply ship would be mightily handy right now. We don't have that tech, though. The system north of Sloes van (westernmost) is ours and full of gas giants. We queue mines on 3 giants with caslon, and 2 with hydrogen. I guess this was where we busted a spaceport, since there is a host of "independent" mining ships around.

2170.06.09. Tefnyl Bandits destroy the gas mining build right outside Netoa. Battle 5 was too slow to save it but fast enough to kill the bandits. Battle 5 is low on fuel, and the killed mine would have been a caslon source...

We retire a former mortalen construction ship, and buy 5 new ones. Maybe that will help on various issues. Up to 15. Why not retrofit rather than retire, btw? We don't want mortalen to try set up our advanced designs, now, do we?



Watching Battle 8 head to the eastern area of low fuel, and grumpy about the Tefnyl Bandit attack, we tell them to attack their spaceport. We tell the diplomacy contact officer to just explain "never mind us, just killing pirates", in case the Securan Harmony cares. But why would they care? A system with 2 pirate spaceports and a 27% built criminal network, they probably forgot they even have it.



This will hopefully send a message to the Tefnyl Bandits that they ought to stay away from our caslon mine builds. There is a battle between the two local pirate clans at the colony while we do this.

They fend of some bandits trying to intervene, then turn on some of the Dread Mining ships in the system, that were fighting the Tefnyls and got a spaceport here as well.



Before all pirates are dead, Battle 8 has half of the ships damaged, and head for repair. They choose Sloes Van 6 spaceport. Uh, oh. When will we see battle 8 again? (We could, of course, have sent them elsewhere to repair).

Hidden Claw Industries raid a main way down in the SE corner of the galaxy. What do we have mines there for, anyways?



A construction ship building a gas mine at the first of several caslon giants just north of Sloes Van, reports on a Sinister Company Construction ship starting to set up a spaceport. One single somewhat fueled cruiser of Crusher 1 takes the job of chasing it away.

Repairs work out well at Sloes Van spaceport. Two construction ships are at work in the gas mining system to the north. Battle 8 move there to watch the proceedings (and wait for fuel).



Lovely, 3 caslon mines being set up in an area of need. Dread mining celebrate with raiding one of them. "We know where you live, we just need some fuel". The repair stop at the medium spaceport works well.

Btw, there is a lot of pirate ships visiting new colonies, I don't catch all of them, but drop by to see a fleet killing some once in a while.

Fierce Moon Minerals at Sloes van 6. They are the former owners. We know where they live (at least some of their spots).



Surprise, surprise, we found some structures in the Thyrfirra system. Crusher 6 at Sipan move to the gas giant just a very short stop down left from this one. A construction ship is building a mine on another one. Apart from the colony ship in the image, there are no pirates present.

The base is pretty weak for being large spaceport and defensive bases. Since we only ever saw the Capital ship of the phantom fleet, we assume it spawned early and were killed by pirates/a local AI empire. We heard no news of them either.

Since this is a "large structure" with spaceport and 3 defensive bases, a direct attack will hurt as ships would land on top of the defensive bases while circling the spaceport. We try to land suitably far away that they circle that point, and can move in as a unit. They may not be the latest bleeding tech, but they may still hurt. That other gas giant is a suitable spot to aim for.



They lived in our backyards causing no annoyance. Now they attack a mine in Jintawoe (kind of circled). The Pantulumen defensive fleet is told to kill the mine and move back to base. Battle 2 is at Mortalu and head of for their base (small spaceport). Now, was this a good idea by them?

Tech update

A short while ago we got the ship size update without noticing the news, there is a lot of battles gong on... The effect is detailed here. Destroyers, troop transports, smaller ships are not affected. They are below 400 size, the old limit.

No capital ship design at this size. By watching the "latest designs" we can see that the current capital ship design is size 727, but the AI would try to fit like it did with the cruisers to 400 size. But it strip away that much stuff.

The Carrier was sneaking under 600 size (special size rule for carriers). Now it is 633. If we compare with a Battle 8 carrier.

Values are old/new

Fighter bays 5/5
Cruise speed 16/20
Shields 1080/1080
Point defense 24/24
Firepower 36/36
Armor 18/18

We can see, a bit more speed. That may come in handy.

For cruisers? A battle 8 cruiser is size 400, the new is 494, that is quite a lot of components. old/new.

Cruise speed 17/14
Shields 900/900
Firepower 204/240
Point Defense 12/12
Armor 18/18

They have added some blasters and a nuclear devastator. And they have become heavier and slower.
Not a fantastic upgrade, as spaceports are met with torpedoes only which has not increased. We are in no great hurry to retrofit into slower ships. Even if carriers get a bit faster, they can wait. Remember, our fleets are deployed to protect against, and to kill pirates, retrofitting them would be a pain for small gain.

Continue

2171.05.10. As X pantulumen fight some fire bandits in the Jintawoe system, Battle 2 knocks on the door of their spaceport. As the spaceport dies, we queue a construction ship to build a gas mine on its location. It keeps an eye on the system, and another fuel mine never hurts. And if we got a gas mine we doubt another pirate crew will try set up base there.



2171.07.20 At the same time, Battle 5 fight fierce moon minerals at Netoa. They can not prevent the raid (where a tech is stolen), but kill many ships and capture two for tech retirement. They have 1 ship with minor damage, but that may have been an old wound. That one heads to sloes van to repair.

Battle 8 has refueled at the new gas mines in the east. It moves to Sloes Van 6, and Crusher 1 that was there, heads the other way to refuel. Refueling 31 cruisers and carriers at a gas mine is not fast by any measure. The latest patch should increase the docking bays of the mines, if I saw right.



With the photographer core a bit distracted, Crusher 6 was found hitting the colony ship and one defensive base. We could not do much better by ourselves, the landing spot (a ring of their landing target is seen at the lower left) worked out well. They all moved to that planet, and then headed for a base. The plan is to destroy the closest base, then the spaceport, then the far bases. One at a time, limiting incoming damage, maximizing our damage to each target that fires on our ships.

We discover that a battle 2 cruiser was badly damaged at the Fire Bandits battle. It has no hyperdrive and is scrapped. We order a new cruiser at Edop (where they are heading), and add it to the fleet. Meanwhile, crusher 1 sees a mine in the refueling system captured by Dread Mining. They kill the pirate, and capture the mine back, then start to refuel at it. They are fully aware of the dread spaceport a short jump north, they just need some fuel.



As Crusher 6 kills the phantoms spaceport, they find a stash of technology. One of their carriers is boarded by forces from a base, the carrier is destroyed. Apart from that, 5 damaged. How about the tech haul?

- High storage capacitors - A necessary shield tech (improvement to the ones used)
- Advanced Medicine - Nice. On the way to good tech.
- Light Torpedo Bombers - Very nice with better fighters.
- Officer Training - Save maintenance, can build admiral improvement facility, closer to another regional capital
- Advanced Maneuvering. We used to have crap vectors for turning, now we got the second to last tech.

2171.12.03: A second pirate base at the Mortalen capital system is under construction. pathetic.

2172.01.27. Battle 5 fend off dread mining ships attacking Netoa but takes a lot of damage. This confirms suspicion of rail guns or gravitics. Battle 8 at Sloes van is full of fuel and healty and heads to Netoa, Battle 5 head to Sloes Van for repairs. A fleet swap. Crusher 1 is waiting for the last ships to refuel at the gas mines north of Sloes Van.

When the fleet cower is lacking, sinister spaceways attack a gas mine in Sloes Van. We know where they live, please line up for punishment. It is the base very near that we left after killing their two other bases early in the eastern campaign.

Another fleet swap for repairs with Battle 2 at Mortalu and Battle 4 at Murillea, the southernmost colony. We start defensive base builds at Astemai and Murillea 2. The two defensive fleets here also see frequent visitors, as does Mortalu system.



2172.03.16 Crusher 1 is refueled and ready and head for the small dread mining spaceport nearby. We can see the sinister spaceways ships at Sloes Van where Battle 5 has arrived for repairs. Since the dread mining ships hurt, Crusher 1 will probably need a trip to the shipyards at Sloes Van afterwards.

The Sloes Van spaceport has fuel in store after the appearance of 3 caslon mines next doors. The fuel situation here is improved, but we are just getting refueled and ready. And 3 active fleets use a lot of fuel, civilians will struggle with keeping up with their demands on a spaceport. Again, we want resupply ships :(



2172.04.07 There are many ships present when Crusher 1 attacks the spaceport. There are more ships "above the image", and the carrier heading that way to keep distance has not made the best choice ever. With rail guns or gravitics, this could damage a lot of ships.



Lots of ships, the spaceport is down, but the battle rages. Half of crusher 1 got damaged. And if this is a small spaceport of dread mining, we hope someone else kills their large ones.

2172.07.13 Battle 2, sent south to relieve the somewhat damaged battle 4, is caught in a battle with the Ikoriun Ravagers when they arrive and end up even more damaged than battle 4. Straight back to Edop... Did the Ravagers use rail guns, or did the alien capital ship they had present cause that?



2172.07.21 As Crusher 1 files into the system for repairs, Battle 5 done with that part launches at the Sinister Invaders small spaceport. There could be quite a few ships present.

If you get the impression that pirate war can be hectic, we can confirm that.

As the image is taken, battle 8 has a battle with dread mining ships at Netoa. Half the fleet heads off to repair afterwards, the rest stays. We do not know where the dread mining are based now, hopefully far away, and this was hopefully the remnants of the missions from their lost spaceport.



Battle 5 finds a few ships as expected, and work on the base. Like last time, we notice that these pirates have low shield strength. They probably have fast recharge shields?

We catch Crusher 1 moving west, this is probably due to home base being that way. Fleets tend to move to base after repairs. We tell them to turn around.



Battle 5 finds that Sinister Invaders, while annoying, at least does not use nasty weapons, and has none damaged. We queue a gas mine on the gas giant that hosted the base, and send battle 5 east to kill a small Fierce Moon Mineral spaceport. The spaceport one step further is large, and probably more suitable for crusher 1.

We need some more punch with many fronts to attend to. We order 9 cruisers at Sollost and 2 Carriers at edop, to turn Battle 2 into Crusher 2. Battle 2 is currently repairing at Edop.



2172.12.19: While waiting for its reinforcements, battle 2 takes of to bust a small spaceport of the Ikoriun Ravagers. A large spaceport of the same can be seen 1 sector further to the right, the green between is a large spaceport of the Sinister Outlaws. The Ravagers have been noticed as more annoying lately, and they do need more ships for the large spaceports, anyways. Also, battle 2 were damaged fighting the Ikuriun Ravagers at their last trip south, so lets not just casually stroll into their large spaceport with a normal battle fleet.



At the same time Crusher 6, repaired, refueled and with a replacement carrier under construction, takes off for the bases of the lone sun marauders. This should be a formality, they have 0 military ships, and are the former owners of the phantom fleet and the phantom fleet bases we just destroyed. But if we clear these away, we know there won't be more ships built here, not that they seem to build anything with these spaceport, anyways... The leftmost spaceport is large, the plan is to take them from right to left.



2173.01.09: Battle 5 is at work at the Fierce Moon Minerals small spaceport. They down at least one construction ship in the process. They take no damage, kill quite a lot, and heads back to our mining system north of Sloes Van to refuel.

The Najarcan reminds us of their existence by visiting Murillea 2. Our southernmost colony.



2173.03.07. Battle 2 at work in the Natunatu system. The mortalen complain about their presence in their territory. As they have cleared the system of all pirates (including a Fire bandits mine and some random pirates), they head home for repairs. We also order further 2 cruisers since we calculated wrongly at the first order of ships for the crusher upgrade. The battles spawned a couple of ships in Sollost, both sent to retire.

So many pirate battles in the systems of the latest batch of new colonies...



2173.05.22. So many pirate battles, that we have to refuel the fleet at Netoa at our gas mine system. There are not enough fleets in the area to protect both colonies and bust pirates at the same time. Especially when defenders need to go away for fuel too. Crusher 1 launches at the large Fierce Moon Minerals spaceport in the east. Two light blueish and yellow targets for the future is in the south.

Battle 4 on our southernmost flank has 1 ship missing, and a carrier is ordered at Edop as two damaged members head there for repairs. Battle 9 in the system north of that (Astemai) sends two back to repair after a battle. We have discovered a pirate base in the system just outside this one. The owners, Sinister Company, are not yet flagged as annoying. Or we have forgotten that they once were.

2173.07.06. Crusher 6 had many damaged at the small northern spaceport, and goes back for repairs. More nasty weapons in use... One ship lacks hyperdrive and is scrapped. A new ship is ordered at Ecery to replace it. How will that large spaceport up there be if a small one hurts this badly?



2173.09.11: Crusher 1 finds themselves a nice little battle at the pirate spaceport (large, Fierce Moon ravagers). The orange ship top right is a frigate of Securan Harmony that is a bit optimistic in taking on this all alone.



As the shields are down and the base is taking heavy damage, the lead cruiser has already gone down, and it went down fast. Still lots of enemy ships are flying, our carriers could be in trouble, but soon the enemy ships will have the fleets full attention. After the fighting ends, they will head back for repairs with a few damaged in addition to the one lost. A replacement cruiser is ordered at Sloes Van 6 spaceport. We wonder if that one will be built without interruption from shortages.

2173.10.23 Crusher 6 heads for the second small spaceport in the north. The replacement ship is still not complete, so 30 starts the journey.

As battle 5 take up position at Netoa in a refueled state, we order a defensive base on top of the colony.



2173.12.09: Battle 8 is refueled and ready in our gas mine system, and heads off to bust a Tefnyl Bandits spaceport in the south. It will not stop at the blueish Najarcan spaceport, since that one is large. We can see that Crusher 1 on the right has just started its journey back for repairs, and that there are less known pirate bases in the immediate area than there used to be.



2173.12.30: As crusher 6 engages the spaceport in the north, there are at least 5 pirate construction ships in the system. One can be seen in the image. 5 of ours take damage, none are lost. Back for repairs and preparation for the battle with the large spaceport. That one could hurt. A lot.

We think we killed all 5 construction ships, not that these guys appeared to do anything (no military ships). Maybe they will start once we demolish their construction ships and bases. They have a base far east, and could be strangled by maintenance.



Battle 2 has received all the 13 ships that turns it into a Crusher fleet. It is now known as Crusher 2. It takes off for a large spaceport of the Ikoriun Ravagers. We seem to remember that they hurt in the past.

We can see the newly discovered spaceport next to Muunos Mandil system where we got the colony Astemai. We can see that Astemai is a good colony by the large influence circle it creates.

We decide that 1.45 million on hand and 293k cashflow may allow us to retrofit Sloes Van 6 spaceport to large without it breaking our economy. It may have more workers than the colony beneath has inhabitants, but we can buff it to stand better against an attack, and build up further stores in the more central parts of the galaxy. Discussions about a southern spaceport are still ongoing.



To their surprise, battle 8 finds two spaceports by the Tefnyl Bandits. There are a few ships around, but more Tefnyls are fighting a strike force of the Securan Harmony outside the Riksul Colonies colony of Capredur 2 that is in the system. The Tefnyl Bandits also got a mine in the system.



When the two spaceports blows up (why kill one when you can do two at the same time?), lots of ships are released from their grasp. What are the states of these ships? Damaged? Incomplete? Fully working? Hopefully they will soon be very damaged.

2174.04.18 The secura utopia starts trading Korabbian Spice with us. The source is pretty close to Sipan.



2174.05.05 As battle 8 jump around chasing the last pirate ships of their target system, Crusher 2 has reached its large spaceport target.



They hammer the target, who's shield have just gone down. The Carriers are busy trying to evade and escape from the ships present.

Edop Spaceport starts building 5 cruisers, 5 destroyers, 5 frigates, 2 carriers to make up X Mortalu, the mortalu defense fleet. Grau and Edop together makes Mortalu the second most valuable system in the empire, after Sipan.

And since we order that mess of ships at Edop, we are fine with Crusher 2 wanting to repair at Sloes van 6 spaceport once it is done crushing the opposition at their target system.

The Humans moan about military forces in the system where battle 8 is fighting. Leave? Before busting all the pirate ships? We are not trespassing, we are house cleaning. Someone else's house. Once satisfied with the lack of pirate ships, they head back to Sloes Van for repairs. With a couple of Crusher fleets, and at least one battle fleet coming in for repairs, that spaceport build was not a bad idea after all. They do have to step over to the mining system to refuel now and then, though. But it is not like "any spaceport" can refuel 50-100 carriers and cruisers dropping by for fuel at approximately the same time. And that return for fuel again and again.

Being bored, the invasion fleet commander tells the boys to load troops. Just to be sure. Maybe some have room? And there are some to be found?



2175.09.11 With the full roster of 31 fully operational ships, Crusher 6 launches for the large spaceport of the north. Wish them luck, remember that the small ones did hurt...

We have construction on suggest, and accept various defensive bases. Beate, ecery, Grau... Apart from our pirate base busts, the north seems quiet. Maybe because there are 3 working securan empires (alongside us), and not a lot of small and weak colonies? The center where we operate is full of small colonies under the pirate hammer, as can be seen by the small influence circles.



2175.01.06 We are almost late to the party, Crusher 6 is working on the pirate spaceport. The spaceport is almost at full shields, 4 ships are already damaged, one badly.



The ships targeted by the spaceport take a beating, but the spaceport is shields down. And it is only going in one direction from there. 28 ships alive when the base is down, one is captured, reducing number to 27. One has no hyperdrive and is scrapped, 26 are going back with 5 lost. Sipan 4 spaceport starts building 5 cruisers to replace losses. We build on the way south, as the northern sector is short of targets. There is one pirate colony, but the Tashtur Sinika Syndicate has not bothered us, except maybe in the very early days of space expansion around Sipan. And we probably don't need a crusher fleet to control that one if we bother to bring a couple of transports north. Battle 3 is sitting outside Ecery, after all...

It is 2175.03.16, and we have been punishing pirates that annoy us. Two crusher fleets at Sloes Van are soon ready to strike again, and it is a fitting time for a status.

Status
[image][/image]
A hot tip: If you want to play "empires vs empires with a touch of pirates", don't start with many pirates nearby. And lots of independents, and expensive research. This is a bit of a failed game, actually. But lots of pirate bashing!

Also, stupid steam. Update? It said. Cancel I said. Launch? it said. Yes, I said. Nothing happened. The other window, play game. And end up patched to 1.9.5.2. Stupid steam. I have another install, though, they can't trick me (It could be a 1.9.5.1 beta, though, but it probably does not matter).

No colonization yet? We have in reality colonzied by invasion, for instance two low pop colonies in the east, one low pop colony in the south. But maybe it is time in the more quiet areas near the capital or to the NW? Soon, or something.

The pirate battle is progressing well. The very annoying ones have been hit, some slightly annoying ones are still around.



The usual pirate bases highlighted. The ones near "home" are not very annoying, the one at the left edge has moved to the hit list, though. The "east" of the eastern colonies is getting more clean.

A new Naxx independent has spawned in the lower left, we can see a shared system of green and dark purple-ish. There is a third naxxilian independent there as well that could make the system really interesting if they make an empire.

The mortalen, the dark red near home with a pirate base in their capital system, has not developed their colonies at all. See how small the influence circles of the dark red are. Even Netoa, the left one of my two eastern, seems to have a bigger circle, and that is a totally craptastic 51% quality site. And I don't have a pirate base in my capital system either...



A couple of ackdarian independents near the bottom. And there is one empire that appears a bit dominant. Big trade with the Haakonish (loros fruit). And I hope that the Atuuk trade is mostly them buying, or the construction management guys need to be fired.



I am a bit curious of whether the new "small" colonies develop more rapidly with bigger colonies around the galaxy. Does migration kick in? And with this being an AAR and all, I got the colony screenshot from the last update. The last update was 2170.04.20. Today 2175.01.06, so almost 5 years. Some colonies then and now.

All numbers in M.

Sollost 2 (capital): 15292 to 16125
Najarca 1: 7455 (max pop)
Pantulumen 2: 4117 to 4285 (max?)
Murillea 2: 1107 to 2267
Sloes van 6: 1033 to 2597
Dila 3: 5016 max
Grau: 7452 max

If population did not move, it is at max, even if the game does not say so just now. And we appear to have a lot of full colonies.

Mirillea 2 (south) and Soloes Van 6 doubling in 5 years must be about migration. The capital has only doubled twice since the start (and may have lost population to migration)

While being curious, I discovered that the two southern colonies had 0 troops. And that the rest of the empire has no ungarrisoned troops on the ground at all. Two ungarrisoned colonies, in particular in pirate territory is not by my plan at all. I think we can afford to recruit some.


Defensive bases popping up on AI advisors suggestion.

6 large spaceports? From memory I can only remember 5. The quick menu on the left says 5. The ship list tell of a large spaceport at Beate. I scrap it and remind myself to pay more attention when the AI suggests defensive bases.



Accidentaly starting on a large spaceport to 44k for then only to scrap it before complete, is not really a big issue at all.

With recreational center comes resort bases. 1 resort base in the capital system, 1 a short trip north. Both with quite a few visitors. One south of Sipan, some visitors. One mystery base I have no clue why is built in the capital system has 20K dhayut, just so it will not feel all alone, or something.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 39
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/9/2014 4:14:01 PM   
tylertoo

 

Posts: 83
Joined: 9/3/2012
Status: offline
Great job as usual Bingeling. I've been playing since Legends, and always enjoy your AARs.

I frequent two general-interest gaming forums where a lot of people are trying DW for the first time. I will point them toward this AAR.




< Message edited by tylertoo -- 6/9/2014 5:15:22 PM >

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 40
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/9/2014 4:26:43 PM   
Theluin


Posts: 189
Joined: 5/13/2011
From: Europe, Terra
Status: offline
Great read Big thanks for taking the time to write this!

(in reply to tylertoo)
Post #: 41
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/9/2014 8:24:07 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
Thank you both for comments. I have been afraid that this has been a very repetitive pirate spaceport bash for a while. It feels like this has been an offensive war on steroids, without the fear of attacks on colonies (not the kind of attacks that really matter).


(in reply to Theluin)
Post #: 42
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/9/2014 8:39:17 PM   
ehsumrell1


Posts: 2529
Joined: 8/17/2010
From: The Briar Patch Nebula
Status: offline
Nice job Bingeling!

_____________________________

Shields are useless in "The Briar Patch"...

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 43
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/9/2014 9:47:43 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
Maintenance and planning

We noticed no troops for pickup. For recruitment, any dhayut, sluken or mortalen troop are acceptable. Apart from that, the capital is the only one that can make armor and special forces. Or, Sipan 4 can make armored, but atuuks in the army? No way.

The booked are: 15 armored and 10 special forces on the capital. 6 normal troops on all colonies with dhayut/sluken/mortalen troops. 6 is the load of a transport. That leaves 5 or so colonies not recruiting, and the capital not recruiting normal troops, so about 9*6 = 54 troops. And 15 armor and 10 special forces. For pickup, when needed.

Also, about colonization, this is the left side colony list.



Lets colonize the lot.

Weirujum is in the capital system. 80%, a mining location of many a past pirate battle, and a prime spot for alien ships dropping out of some anomaly. A good prospect.

Dacshii 2 in the system of Ecery at the very north. 77%, no resources. Decent quality and prospect.

Xirus 3 a short stop west of the capital. A place on many pirate raids on mines. 71%, low-ish quality.

Narg 2 a short bit SE of Atuuko (and Beate). 80% decent, some resources.

Firassea 4 is new on the list. It has become our territory by the expansion of the Edop (and Grau) influence circles in the mortalen system. It is at the very edge of the circle, probably taken over from the mortalen capital circle with the improvements in Mortalu. Lets hope that it does not shift ownership as it orbits the star, or something.

Urukablis 1. At the very eastern edge of the Sipan circle. It is 59% and is rather crap, but in theory this OK mining system could be lost to the blue securans if either of their two colonies expand their influence circles by quite a lot. And we need something to urge pirates to crawl out of hiding in that area as well.

In an early expansion when colony ship feels empty and we are eager to expand, I would send a fleet ahead and stuff. Now we say "good luck", and consider buying some defense fleets for them once they are up. We do not bother to micro manage the race of the colonizer, it appears two will be mortalen and 1 securan.

Back to fighting

2175.03.17 and the struggle goes on. The aim is to make the empire a pirate free zone. And later, maybe to grab some more pirate colonies, but that could be quite a while.



Since we are preparing for new colonies and all, tidying our backyard would be a good idea. Again we see the pirate ships over the scanners in the capital area at the bottom. They appear to head for the targeted system in the upper left. The arrow is a single destroyer of the Atuuko defense fleet that will drive by and detect any pirate base if there. Then head back to its leader at Atuuko system.

If you are not stubborn about automation choices like I am, send a spy to steal the territory map of the pirate group in question.



Crusher 1 has refueled, and takes off towards the Najarca Council large spaceport nearby. We have seen them mess around in this area, and this is our local crew from the early days.

The destroyer found nothing. It heads off to three systems in the gas cloud just north. There are not that many options with hydrogen/caslon around. We also realize there is a caslon source (unused by us!) just outside our territory where those pirates are seen. That is maybe the answer. A destroyer of construction fleet heads there to find out. Construction fleet has been forgotten in the capital system with some frigates and destroyers.



2517.06.14 Crusher 1 finds a system with some ships, among them 1 fleet sitting a bit away from the spaceport. A construction ship appears to build a mining station. They attend to the spaceport and the ships around it. Those pink guys fought recently had about 3000 shields on their LSP, this one has 10620.



Lots of shields just means more grinding away. The spaceport at half shields. Once the station dies, they are told to jump at the construction ship, ignoring the other pirates for now.

They fail, the construction ship is too fast. We think these are dhayut pirates, and got our wonderful hyperdrives that way.

One cruiser is damaged with no hyperdrive and scrapped. As we watch it we notice it got a fighter bay. So that was what all the extra size was used for after getting larger build size? (this one is probably a new replacement cruiser, the old have not been retrofitted). Back to sloes van for repairs (one more is damaged), which also builds a replacement cruiser despite a warning about lacking osalia (the civilians should manage, right?).

No pirate bases around the NW area anywhere? What are they up to? Or possibly, where are they hiding?

2175.08.26 Crusher 6 is repaired at Ecery after their rought spaceport battle in the last part. The replacements are not yet finished at Sipan, but as we found no pirate base, they are told to move to Edop in the mortalu system. As a first step in finding action.



2175.10.02: Crusher 2 is refueled and ready, and launches towards the large spaceport of the sinister outlaws. Compared to the najarcan 10000 shields, the 4000 shields of this one looks like a breeze. They could hurt more, though.

Oh joy. We see the mortalen bust a pirate spaceport in their own capital system. A pirate group has taken over their minor colony in the system. It is our old buddies the lone dagger ravagers, who we have not seen moving since our attacks at their spaceports.



2176.01.03 Crusher 2 does not appear to struggle with their large, southern spaceport. They want to refuel at a gas mine at our nearest colony system, but we wonder. Wasn't there a pirate base just besides that one? They stop by there on the way just to check it out.



As we see Crusher 6 moving south, we notice that new pirate base south of Sipan. It appears like the system has quite a few bases of the B'cnus Network. Like we learned with the fire bandits, pirates that appear to cause no harm may attack at any moment. Better kill them while passing by.

Crusher 2 in the south finds no pirate base. Pirates killing pirates? They refuel at the gas mine in the colony system.



2176.03.07 6 or 7 small spaceports?! Crusher 6 has a surprise waiting for them. They did not expect all those bases to be at the same gas giant.



Crusher 6 took a beating, but we did manage to get them to finish off a damaged spaceport top right before leaving. 16 out of 31 ships make it back to Sipan for repairs. That is how you defend against empire fleets, good on those pirates!

After fumbling a bit we build 15 new ships for crusher 6 at the capital and sipan. We intended to use Ecery and Sipan, but... The east has no further targets for now, and Crusher 1 is told to refuel at sipan spaceport. It will be a delay until all of crusher 6 is ready, though.

You don't just defeat a crusher fleet and expect to be around to brag about it!

As new colonies appear, we recruit and garrison 5 troops. We make an exception and recruit 5 securan troops at Dacshii 2.

2176.06.15 A ship of the savage storm league shows up at Dila 3 and is killed by the defense fleet. We think they were in this region, and may have owned this colony. Their current known spaceports are more than 2 sectors east.

2176.07.16 Joy, we start to build an armored factory at Beate. At another colony that we will never build a troop at, but it is nice to the the maintenance bill.



2176.07.18 Crusher 2 is ready and refueled, and head for the large spaceport and colony of the sinister spaceways at the western edge. This colony was triggered by our explorer finding a sleeping chamber of securans a long time ago. The colony? Crap. 65%, max pop at 3788M. With a 14% development bonus ruin.

Invasion heads to the system SE of it, where there is nothing to be had in the form of resources, and where there should be nothing to fear at all.

A ship of the Alzuk Authority at Dila as well? Why do the old crews of this area suddenly show up after so long?

2176.09.15. A tax rebellion at the new colony Firassea 4? They are unhappy about being in dhayut empire, and complaining about no resources. One will be fixed with time, the other they have to get used to. And tax rebellion? From 30M Mortalen? We are ruined! And we should have sent a dhayut colonizer.

And as the dila fleet fight more Alzuk ships...



Crusher 2 engages the spaceport at the pirate colony, and a troop transport that is present. When they are dead, two transports of invasion fleet (in the system next doors) is sent in with a mix of armor and troops. The rest of invasion back to Edop in the Mortalu system.

Battle 7 has been sitting idly at Sipan the whole time. It is told to refuel and to head to the new colony in the west to relieve Crusher 2 which has 3 damaged. We could expect some pirate visitors at a former pirate colony, right?

The pirates had no defenders, and the second transport had to unload before we could start the pirate removal battle. Once the battle starts, invasion is ordered to load troops and the leader gets new order to move to mortalu system. We assume the new troops is a significant reason why our cashflow dropped (to a scary 179K).

The new colonists at Urukablis 1 are the same whiny mortalen as at that other colony. But these are unlikely to pay significant taxes ever. Since the whiny bastards are near the latest pirate activity at Dila 3, Ecery builds 4 destroyers, 2 cruisers and 2 carriers for a defense fleet of the system.

A construction ship tries to build in the pirate system that spanked Crusher 6. And nope, the 5 remaining spaceport has not dismantled themselves. Crusher 6 has all replacement ships built, they just need to get to sipan from the capital and refuel. Crusher 1 is ready at Sipan.



The rather poor colony of Shecetare 1 at the western edge. Near the end of the pirate battle.



2177.09.24. Crusher 1 and crusher 6 have launched at the 5 pirate spaceports. We can see a pirate ship in the dila system, doing no harm at all while the defense fleet is busy refueling at sipan.



The two crusher fleets go to work. On arrival, a securan strike force tried the same. We arrive with two crusher fleets unsure if we will succeed, they try with a strike force. They left, we do actual damage.



One spaceport is down, the fleets fight hard.
As the spaceports are down, and we finish off the last pirates (a size 806 cruiser among them!), we queue a gas mine at the site to keep eyes on things.

Crusher 1 and Crusher 6 had one damaged ship between them, a crusher 1 carrier with 1 damaged armor. If a hammer does not work, bring two. Crusher 6 heads back to refuel at Sipan to hang around in the north. Crusher 1 is told to repair at Sloes Van 6 spaceport to be ready in the east. Crusher 2 is in the west heading for the capital to repair after the arrival of Battle 7.

For now we declare that our hit list is clear. As long as pirates don't put bases too close or attack, we will sit tight for a while. If they attack? We will improvise something.

This intended inactivity does not include any pirate colonies nearby...



Two pirate colonies circled.

The top one is atuuk, and controlled by Tashtur Sinika Syndicate that are not included in the diplomacy list (a bug?). A 76% resource less continental. Polymer in the system is the slightly interesting resource.

The bottom one is owned by our old friends, the Najarca Counsil. The colony has good quality (88%) and 2300M mixed population with human as the most numerous.

For now, invasion is loading troops, and we tell the fleet leader to change course for Sipan which is between the two.

There is and has been a steady spam about attack on mines built in the Tefnyl Hive regions in the very south. We don't care.

2178.03.08. Another message about spice trade with the Secura Utopia? I thought we had that. And mining rights with the Haakonish.

As the leading invasion fleet ships are closing in on Sipan, Battle 3 moves from Ecery in the north, to the pirate system on Drumond Caas a modest distance to the west.

We realize some defense fleets are missing. We build 5 cruisers and 5 destroyers for some systems. It is nice that cruisers have 1 fighter bay, meaning that 5 of them give the same fighter cover as 1 carrier. Such fleets for

Daschii (including Ecery).
Shecetare (the one we just grabbed in the SW)
Muunos Mandil and Murillea (the two in the south)
Kurillea and Sloes Van (the two in the east)
Firassea (the new colony east of Mortalu)

For now we skip fleets for Xirus near the capital and Narg near Akkuto, since they are a bit "behind the lines". Attacks will make us change our mind if they appear. The new fleets give some freedom for battle fleets to move away from somewhat exposed targets.

This is not free, and we ignore warnings about various missing resources. We are surprised about a gold warning at the capital, for instance. We see that there is almost 2500 gold reserved at the gold mining base in the capital system, so it is probably already incoming.

2178.04.22 The talfagleu army attacks a mine in our new SW system. On to the new southern hit list with them. They have a spaceport nearby, we just need a crusher fleet.

Battle 8 is heading to the other marked pirate colony as Crusher 1 appeared at Sloes Van. They started from there, moving north.

2178.05.30: A deadly plague breaks out at Shecetare 1, the new SW former pirate colony. Such good things that one bring into the empire. It moves east to the mortalen colony a sector away...

Since we discovered the fighter bay on the cruiser design we want it. We try to retrofit Crusher 1 at Sloes Van, and that could take a while. Crusher 6 do the same at Sipan. Crusher 2 will do the same when done repairing at the capital. For sipan and the capital the new orders for defense fleets will delay things a bit.

2178.06.26 Invasion at Sipan send to transports to attack Drumond Caas 3, the pirate colony in the north. There may actually be no facility here, this colony is weird.

Battle 8 arrives in Framisc Yagin, the more southern pirate colony at the same time. They find 1 military ship, 3 construction ships, and a defensive base. They jump at the construction ship furthes from the defensive base. At the same time Invasion sends two troop transports. They are some distance away, remember.



As usual, the Najarcan Constructiors are too fast without hyper deny. The defensive base appears at half shields, is it brand new? It is an easy kill, since the cruisers focus on the jumping construction ship, we get a view of fighter power demolishing the base. None of our take more than shield damage.

-44K cashflow. At least the advisors wont ask for a large spaceport anytime soon. Bonus income is good, cash at 2,4M, no worries. We notice a massive spaceport income (558K, and that we suddenly have 190+148+85 freighters. I pondered at the low freighter count, at last status: 92+71+41.

The two pirate colonies are invaded about the same time. The same distance from Sipan indeed.

There are no facilities or forces at Drumond Caas 3. A buggy pirate group, it seems.



Drumond Caas 3 has some securans, and 61M Ikurro. The first Ikurro in the empire.



Eyost is populated with an angry bunch. 893M human, 584M Atuuk, 446M Sluken, 372M Mortalen, 257M Dhayut, 50M securan. A health mix of species. They used to live happily together, now all but the Dhayut and Sluken are forced into hard labor.

Since we are -74K cashflow and have civilians go berserk with shopping creating build queues, we buy two 5 destroyer, 5 cruiser fleets for the two conquests. 55 waiting at each spaceport! Up to 213 small freighters now, it was 190 a few lines up.

We watch the warnings about shortages with some interest.

We said we would retrofit Crusher 2, but with the current build queues, we won't. We are witing for the repair of the damaged cruiser to finish. Or not, it had damaged hyperdrive, and is a sector away, that is why it never was repaired :) We order a replacement cruiser, to be delivered sometime in the far future when spaceport queues are gone. And scrap the stranded ship, of course.



2179.02.11 This leaves Crusher 2 ready for work. The Talfagleu Army entered our hit list by attacking a mine in Shecetare. We notice it is a dual small spaceport setup, no surprise this time!

2179.03.29 The sinister outlaws enter the list as one ship arrives at Murillea. Their only known base is too far for now, though.



2179.06.02 Many ships and two small spaceport for Crusher 2. Maybe we won't have to retrofit 30 ships after all?

They will lose 2 ships, including one carrier that is captured.

2179.07.09 Dread Dagger Pirates raid the new colony at Narg. Diplomacy have them at 3 ships. They must be newly spawned and we regret not checking that pirates do not respawn. We start building a defensive base on top of each of the 5 new colonies. And on the 3 former pirate ones.

Of the new colonies founded, all but the one at the top has good immigration of Dhayut and Sluken, the northern is stuck at 30M.

Ships are completed, the build queues are moving nicely, but clearing 60 ship buildqueues takes a bit of time.



Crusher 2 will try to take revenge on the annoying Sinister Outlaws. This can not be their only spaceport, but we can only hit what we see. The fleet is at the top circle, Edop. They will refuel at the southern colony, before heading for the pirate base at the very bottom. It is a small spaceport. We have refueling rights with the Tefnyl Hive, which are purple, in case we struggle with the return trip. Lets just hope the Tefnyls actually have some fuel in that case. They will wait a bit at our southern colony for their replacements that will be a bit behind.

2180.05.14 Fitting for a long trip, we research improvements to our racial hyperdrive. Speed up from 23.5k to 29k. The increased fuel consumption could be less beneficial for this trip.

2180.10.10: Crusher 2 starts on its long trip south to kill a pirate spaceport of the sinister outlaws.

2181.01.10 Dread mining attack our gas mine in Murillea and enter the hit list. Too bad we have no clue where they live. These were the guys around Sloes Van that hurt so much.

Unless otherwise mentioned, attacks are by single ships or a very small fleet.



2181.03.28: Crusher 2 finds a small spaceprot that is busy with 11 waiting for construction, and 16 waiting for docking. And that has some ships flying around. Some tefnyl hive ships are also in the system. Our ships kill a lot, and take no damage but shield damage. Enough range to refuel at home? They could refuel at the capital if wanted to (but not at Sipan). They head for the southern colony, hoping for more revenge targets to appear (Dread mining? where are you?).

Economy? -136k cashflow improving, but money is not going down unless we do some major shopping. No need to panic unless money starts tropping fast.



2181.06.30 As Crusher 2 flies north after their spaceport bust, we realize they will fly right past A Talfagleu Army spaceport (small). They did enter our annoyance list showing up at that SW colony, so why not? This could make them short on fuel, due to the fighting possibly using a lot of energy...



2181.08.17 At arrival they find the spaceport damaged, and the sinister spaceways present.
We said "don't hunt pirates", but when the Fearsome Sun Clan of no annoyance is right here?



They aim for the construction ship working outside, and seems to blow up the spaceport (lower left) as an aftertought at landing. Was it shields down already? Almost dead? Now it is dead. A Talf mine on the rock to the right disappeared right away too.

They took damage on one cruiser at the first spaceport, and heads to edop for repairs. The range was maybe reduced by half a sector, but it was two short fights downing 2 spaceports.

2181.11.01 We notice that the colony north of Sloes Van, where we knew a hidden network was being built ages ago, has turned pirate. And not just any pirates, the Dread Mining. Invasion heads for Sloes Van.

Crusher 2 will retrofit at Edop space port, after having its damaged cruiser repaired.



2182.02.16: As Invasion is closing in (on Sloes Van), Crusher 1 is told to attack the pirate colony Pismimbin 1 just to the north. Attack in case there are some structures in place, but if there were we may have seen them on the long range scanner at Sloes Van 6 spaceport.

In other news? From the image we can see that the tiny, undeserving Sloes Van 6 is at least powerful enough to have it influence circle around the Securan Harmony colony down left. If we assume no slaves arrived, we have added about 1300M dhayut and 1600M Sluken since we conquered it. Current population 4154M.

As Crusher 1 as assumed find no opposition, two transports are ordered to attack.



Right after the conquest, a defensive base is ordered, and the pirate structured attacked. Poor quality, nice resources. Minor population of Dhayut and Sluken gives hope of migrants arriving, good since enslaved species does not appear to reproduce well. The system also adds a couple of fuel sources, in an area that has lots of them already. More fuel never hurts.

Invasion fleet is told to load troops, and the leader heads north to Sipan.

It is 2182.11.16, and three pirate colonies have been added.

Status

I have been a bit distracted by helping a friend getting started in the game. And motivation here took a hit, but I guess I must try get into a nice little war.

It has been a couple of days since I played, so my "annoyed" list is a bit rusty, but pirate activity has been some weirdness at Dila (not attacks, just pirates arriving maybe looking for a base destroyed 11 years ago at least), and attacks at the new SW colony, and the small southern colony of relatively newness. The "eastern area" has not been bothered, but we just took a new colony that could trigger some.

We lost our loros fruit supply. The Haakonish wants our stuff, and has both loros and zentiba fluid. The Secura Utopia has been turning spice supplies on and off at frequent intervals. Since they can't decide, maybe we should fetch some? An idea for the future. Which may be why we did the random act of sending invasion leader to Sipan.

There are no futher pirate colonies within 2 sectors of our area.



The galaxy map, with pirates, as usual.

New pirate colony added to the empire in the SW. Another of those is the northern of the 3 we got nearest the galaxy center. And a new pirate one sitting "alone" among foreign territories north of that. And a new left of the big one at the top.

New normal colonies. In the capital system. In the top, big, system. Just west of capital. East of the hub SE of capital (east of Mortalu). Just SE of the "big" colony in the NW. And the easternmost colony near Sipan (the big circle in the middle-north).

Pirates? No annoying targets are known, there is probably something unknown in the south. One corner of the galaxy looks more tidy than the other, and the tidy corner has a red presence.




The Haakonish has -30 covetion, -4 envy and -7 angry at enslavement. And they have two ultra rares. It is hard to overcome those two negatives.

Tefnyl Hive could be an ally that may drag us into wars. It is +33 with just a -4 envy on the negative side. They mostly love our heroic repuation (+21). Feeding them an ultra rare could possibly help both their mood in general, and the trade values to increase that bonus from +4.





I suck at photo editing, so no merging of two shots to get them all. I include the "low" ones (by revenue) to give some comments about the new colonies.

The capital is now at max pop. We have no major signs of lacking ultra rares (135 development is the norm).

It is clear that people migrate to enslavement, as there are 126M naxxilians at Firassea 4. Enslaved races does not grow at all. The ones we established are:

Weirujum in the capital system. 472M Sluken, 426M Dhayut. Sluken are migrating to our colonies in good numbers. 900M is not a bad number after 5-6 years.

Firassea 4 had mortalen colonizers, and only 30M mortalen are there still. 623M sluken, 216M Naxx, 110M dhayut have migrated, or been a result of the reproduction of migrants.

Xirus 3 west of the capital. 572M sluken, 388M Dhayut. Again, a large sluken migration.

Urukablis 1 east of Sipan had mortalen colonizer. 454M dhayut are the additions.

Narg 2 SE of Beate had dhayut colonizer and has 657M dhayut. Hello sluken? We got room. They are probably dissatisfied with the distance to the colony and the desert conditions.

Dachshii 2 in the very north (at Ecery) see no migration and is stuck at 30M securan.

Pismimbind 1, the latest grab, is tiny and has room for more, but will never be very profitable or large at 65%. Drumond Caas 3 could have migration issues, and won't reproduce as all are enslaved. Eyost will be nice. 609M sluken and 442M dhayut do reproduce, the 878M humans do great as forced labor.

All the ones with growth potential should do well from migration. Unless amongst the silly species of the very north.



211 cruisers are a few, them having a fighter bay is lovely. The civilians had less than half as many freighters at the last update.



After recruiting a bunch of troops and building quite a few defensive fleets for various systems, we have found our cashflow limit. But if resort income stay at 133K we have absolutely no issues at all. 2.4M is a decent buffer in any case.

The issue with negative cashflow is that the AI does not seem to build fortified bunkers.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 44
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/10/2014 4:04:16 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
Plotting

If we are to get into a nice little war, it seems to have to declare it ourselves. Generally I am more fond of being declared war upon. Among other things, when not being prepared it is easier to forgive some less than optimal deployment.

Why am I a bit bored? With victory conditions on I would probably have "won" at this time. Why did they not declare war? Our heroic reputation gives a positive boost with all of them, it is a consequence of battling pirates. Most have that kind of reputations, but the Sluken has managed to get "dubious". Good on them. Not all are very high, but the Securan Harmony (with way of the ancients) are the only other below "normal", they are also dubious.

Two images that may help explain why I doubt anyone will declare war, at least without me being at war. They are reduced to 50% size and not meant to be very readable...



Strategic value, the overall measure of power, probably in a non-military sense. I have not bothered to figure out the formula, but probably some economy, population, that kind of stuff.

We are those red guys at the top. The 3 that follow are the Haakonish Industries, Tefnyl Hive, and Free Talfagleu Utopia. The Atuuk and Quameno are the ones struggling, in addition to the former independents. Oh, and the human empire at the very bottom may or may have been an original one, but if they are, they seem to lack a proper capital world (they could have lost it).



This is the military strength. Familiar faces at the top, the following ones are the Haakonish Industries and Free Talfagleu Utopia. An empire like the Mortalen looked "middle pack" in strategic value, but is very weak in military.

So, for plotting. Good things to achieve are ultra rares, expanded borders, and a "bigger red blob". I prefer not to hunt the very good worlds too hard, since I end up like I am now. Too powerful. I rather grab them when it makes sense due to the criteria above. I may stay off the ultra rares too, but not now.



The shot is the top left 8x8 of the galaxy. There are two more sectors at the bottom and at the right. Yellow circles are the 3 sources of ultra rares. The pink circles show my most important colonies to keep due to taxes and one case of strategic consideration.

The logical target is the closest ultra rare of the Secura Utopia. For now, I ignore their two current wars, I look at the alliances. This is seen by clicking them in the diplomacy list. Their most important ally is the Free Talfagleu Utopia. The light blue of the north. The second is the Mortalen Empire. Our struggling next doors neighbors. The third is the Naxxilian Authorithy, that live straight south of the southern colonies. We are not about to declare war right now, so this could of course change. I would prefer them to not be occupied elsewhere when I declare war.

Would the allies come? I am not convinced. We look very scary next to them. The mortalen has 6418 military strength, the naxx 9511. The Crusher 1 and 6 fleets that are done with retrofits? 6216 each.

General danger in the south? Tefnyl Hive are the strong ones, but they are our buddies. To the east? The haakonish, but they are 3 sectors away with their major colonies. South east? Ackdar and Ugnar, but they are not any closer.

The pink circles are our most valuable colonies. The top one, Ecery, is securan majority. It could get very angry in case of war with a securan empire, but the securan has a good bonus to happiness.

The Secura Utopia themselves are not very close either. If the Free Talfagleu Utopia join, they are the main challenge. And may have the best secondary targets.

But first. Retrofit all battle fleets, deploy them to protect key northern targets. Keep some south. Buy some more troop transports, load more troops, and keep some transports in the south. Invasion has left troops at a couple of recent conquests, the capital has some recruited armored troops and special forces, other colonies have normal troops to spare. All colonies should have 5 troops garrisoned, apart from maybe one or two with 4. Some have 10 or so (the more valuable ones).

Action

We order all 6 battle fleets to retrofit. Crusher 2 is still not complete with its retrofit. We order 10 troop transports, to buff the number to 25. 4 new transport to invasion, 6 to a new invasion 2. 1 destroyer from construction fleet to be fleet leader of invasion 2.

The invasion 2 leader is told to move to the Gundur system, which is north of Muunos Mandil where the southern valuable colony is. Why? Because I don't want my troop transports to hang around in systems where enemies may arrive. I don't want them to end up in combat. Invasion is already loading troops with leader heading for Sipan (the valuable that is second from the north). They will not sit here when we declare war, they may need to retrofit and refuel after loading troops. And we need time to build and load the new transports.

I target all the system defense fleets and tell them to move to the colony in the system. So that they will move with it. Before this they may have been distracted by enemy presence. Crusher 1 is sent north to the colony nearest the intended target. Crusher 6 is already at Sipan. Crusher 2 is retrofitting at edop (circled as the second from the south), and will probably remain in that general area.

A pirate arriving at the latest conquest pismimbin reminds us there is no defensive fleet. The defensive base is not complete, a troop transport loading there takes some armor damage and chases it away. We book 5 destroyers and 5 cruisers for a protection fleet at the nearby Sloes Van 6 spaceport. The battle fleet that was there left to retrofit.

An adviser want to colonize ocean stuff with our new Ackadrian. All ocean planets available are at "home" and with quality in the 60s. And would our lovely dhayut and sluken want to move there anyways? No colonization now, at least.

We can see the 68th Taffy fleet at the Atuuk capital. They are at war. It has 11 ships, with 1 cruiser and smaller ships. They don't exactly look very scary compared to our 10 ship defense fleets with 5 cruisers and 5 destroyers. The "older" colonies got less powerful fleets, though, but the good ones will have battle fleet presence.

2183.07.19. All new troop transports are built and refueled. Both invasion fleets are ordered to load troops. They may not end up full since locations may lack enough troops (and they will visit only one) but we could always load again later. Battle fleets are still retrofitting with one exception.

Pro tip: If you are to make a new invasion fleet and recruit a new leader. Do make him leader before sending him south to be the homing beacon for the rest of the fleet. The Invasion 2 fleet marker was spotted NW of Sipan...

We spot the 4th Secura Utopia fleet on scanner at Sloes Van 6 spaceport. 15 ships, 6 cruisers 1 carrier.

Battle fleets are in position and with decent fuel. Invasion fleet has some members with refuel and load orders. Invasion 2 has 24 inf and 4 special forces, a less than optimal offensive distribution (no armor), but a nice defensive one. They need some fuel and stuff. Troop transports are still not quite where they should be.

Deployments:

Crusher 1 is at the colony east of Sipan, nearest the intended target colony.
Crusher 2 is at the Mortalen system. Second circled colony from the south. Prepared for anything.
Crusher 6 is at Sipan. Prepared for a northern target.
Battle 3 is at Ecery, the northern valuable colony.
Battle 4 is at Astemai, the southern valuable colony.
Battle 5 is at Eyost. The colony sitting between foreign ones a bit SE of Sipan.
Battle 7 is at Sipan.
Battle 8 is at Sloes Van, the eastern (southern) spaceport.
Battle 9 is at Beate, the NW circled colony.

Invasion fleet is on the way to a gas mine near Crusher 1's system. Invasion 2 is scattered across the south after loading troops. The leader will draw them north of Astemai.

The capital system? 34 ships of the defense fleet, a former temporary fleet and construction fleet. 2 alien capital ships, frigates and destroyers.

More or less fleet presence in all colony systems outside these ones. If the whole galaxy jump us we could probably manage...

We figure that trying to find Secura Utopia with no war may be a challenge. They have the same defense pacts, and are at war with Qilla Domain (far east) and the Securan Harmony (orange in the north/middle). Their powerful ally the Free Talfagleu Utopia are at war with the Grand Atuuk Territory (NW) and the Haakonish Industries (large, light brown, east-center).

This does not really look all that difficult.

The first Secura Utopia War

2184.06.18: We declare war. The Ackdarian Sovereignty declare war on us. Worried? They got a tiny military and 1 colony in the far SE. Not even in the status shot at the top.

We notice -10 happiness at Ecery for being at war with Securans. The -26 for tax level give some room for the AI to sort that out. Shecetare 1, the SW colony is also securan with -10. They have -24 taxes to compensate with.

We suggest peace with the Ackdarians. They refuse. We could go destroy some stuff to make them more eager for peace, but considering where they are? No, at least not without resupply ships.



Crusher 1 is told to attack the spaceport in the system. It is medium. There are two colonies there, some mining bases, and some ships. Invasion can be seen left of Crusher, heading for one of the two gas mines seen SW of the crusher location.

They have a regional capital seen in the top right near some pirate flags. The capital system is just off the image top right, hard to see in dark blue, but the trade line heads there from that regional capital. For now, we just hit our chosen target system.



Do we sense some desperation? Hello? We just declared war?



2184.07.16: Crusher 1 launches at the spaceport. A strike fleet with some cruisers and a carrier is present. We realize that there are indeed two colonies here, and that blockading both with 1 fleet will be awkward at best. Crusher 6, at Sipan a bit west, is told to blockade the other one. We also tell invasion to move to the colony that is under assault by Crusher 1.

There are 3 and 2 defensive troops on the colonies, and there is a pirate raid ongoing at the other colony. The one that is the korabbian spice source. There is a savage storm hidden facility on the one we are focusing on. Pro pirate defenses by a somewhat powerful AI empire!

Did I mention that crusers have a fighter bay? And the carriers 5? The Crushers has 25 cruisers and 6 carriers, deploying 220 fighters. They do hurt. This battle is not harder than the average large pirate spaceport. As the spaceport dies and the fighter swarm hunts down the last ships nearby, we order crusher 1 to blockade the colony (Ihoarbuz). The fleet members jump around hunting other targets in the system (civilians, mining bases).

The reason I blockade, is that I hate transports sneaking in to strengthen defenses during battle. Unless they are mine, of course. A warning about a cruiser attacked by a pirate? Yes, in the Crusher 1 system. The Securans had everything under control.

2184.09.15. Invasion has arrived, Crusher 6 is very close to arriving at the other colony. Two transports with 11 infantry and 1 armor attack Ihoarbuz. They ought to manage the two defenders and later to kill the hidden pirate base (that is not the full strength of pirates at a pirate colony).

There is a sand slug on the spice colony, a feature of the spice being there. Crusher 6 arrives, and two transport attack, one with 6 troops. We want to leave a garrison of normal troops behind. And we need to take care of those sand slugs that are appearing.



2184.09.26 Sinister spaceways try to raid Dhayu 3, our formerly very raided colony in the south (raided during our 3 colony days). The 10 ship frigate and destroyer defense fleet of the past is not quite up to the task, this is a decent fleet attacking. They get away with tech and resources.



Crusher 2 was at edop ready for whatever, we thought maybe some Naxxilian busting or something if they dared to attack. They launch at the Sinisert Spaceways large spaceport. They have a small one near down there as well.

Distractions! How rude of them. Did they have time to call this attack after war started and tries to exploit our war status? Dhayu 3 has not been attacked for ages, and Murillea (our southern one) could be a more logical target (and has seen visitors). Not to mention the SW one we took from them not too long ago.

Our two ongoing invasions have more than 10 times the defense strength of the colonies. And Invasion fleet still has 2141K strenght loaded with 28 inf, 29 armor and an unknown number of special forces (they do not fit in the selection panel).



2184.10.12 Kal-Setu 3 is the first to fall. 72% quality is not awful, the population is low, but it is our own desert kind of world, so maybe some dhayut could be convinced to move in?

We garrison the 7 normal troops that dropped. It is a freaking spice source, of course we will defend it! We start to build a medium space port. We need to meet the transports in style, and to kill the slugs that will spawn (and hopefully not eat the spaceport before it can defend itself). Two crusher fleets could interrupt the slugs for now, anyways.

2184.11.15 A war between the Atuuks and the Free Taffy Utopia ends. We are not very worried, and if the Taffy's attack we are happy to see that their western regional capital system is no longer contested with the Atuuks owning the minor colony there.

Why is not Ihoarbuz taken? Magic? We have no troops on the ground, the two defenders are there. There was a pirate attack warning, did a pirate land and our troops were teleported to the transports or something? We again locate two transports with a good number of normal troops.



2184.11.23 An escort of the sinister outlaws tried to raid the spice colony. The colony was alone for the moment, and we can see what responded. The explosion of the pirate being vaporized can be seen in the right part of the circle.

Hm, should we move for the regional capital a bit east, or not? Details on the target are scetchy at best, apart from two colonies and some mines being in the system. Large spaceport? 4 defensive bases? How strong are the crushers compared to colony defenses? We tell crusher 6 (with more fuel) to attack the regional capital. Attention must be paid to order them to attack when they land. Attacking the smaller colony could lead to single ships jumping at some major colonies defenses at the other colony.



We can see the arrow for Crusher 6 taking off. We can also see the full extent of the enemy empire. Notice the two dark red pirate colonies at the top center of the image.



2184.12.15 We have taken control of Ihoarbuz which makes the whole system ours. Not great, 68%, a 12% development bonus from ruins. Some strategic resources. But it is in the system of the spice source, we like it! There are probably room for more population? Securan and a few atuuk are also there.

2184.12.22 Plague at the minor colony in the Free Taffy Utopia capital system (north of where we operate). That won't help them if it jumps to the capital colony, and please keep it local. They breed like rabbits, though, and can probably replace lost population fast.

The curse of the game, and of an AAR writing in particular. Crushers 2 and 6 will reach their targets at pretty much the same time. Sequential reporting, even if it happens at once, maybe?



2185.02.01 Battle 2 is a bit ahead and is first at their target. A few ships are present, and they are told to target the construction ship (we hate pirate construction ships). The spaceport? 774 firepower, 4800 probably fast recharging shield.



The construction ship is dead, they blast away at the spaceport, which is already down to 3000 shields. Crusher 6 is close to its target, and we figure that these guys manage the task.

As the spaceport blows, they have 3 damaged cruisers with 8, 17, 29 damaged modules. All are able to jump.

2185.02.14 When crusher 6 are close, we spot the contents of the system. Mining bases, a large spaceport, a strike fleet. The large spaceport has 3340 firepower. Ouch. And 7525 shields.

Our own large spaceports are 1560 firepower and 8385 shields.

We got a torpedo upgrade recently, Crusher 6 is up to 8724 firepower like the other crushers. Battle fleets are at 4920.



2185.02.24. As we fire at the spaceport above the regional capital of Gurqi 3, the securans ask for peace. We did not hear that, we got 222K negative cashflow and 11128M securans with a regional capital would do quite nicely.



As the cruisers close in for some proper shots, the spaceport is already down to about 1500 shields.

It does not take long for the spaceport to explode. With two moderately damaged (cruiser and carrier), Crusher 6 launches at the defensive base of the other colony, with a queued order to blockade the regional capital of Gurqi 3. Invasion is told to load troops, and the leader heads for Gurqi 3 (and hope the full ones follow). Gurqi 3 has about 10 troops, no fortification, and 254K strength. The other colony has only a small garrison.



The defensive base is way weaker than a large spaceport. It is at 2725/3440 shields after having only met a few stray torpedoes and the fighters of Crusher 6. It is dead before a cruiser has had time to get close.

We notice that the leader of invasion is flying alone, and order the whole fleet to move to Gurqi 3. Crusher 6 has moved in to blockade it. They will proceed to blow up mining bases on their own initiative.



A fleet of the securan harmony appear to shoot at civilians at the minor colony in the system. Won't they dare invade anything. Uh, Oh, troop transports taking aim.

:-( Should have sent two fleet to blockade them both. They will grab the minor colony, lets make them unhappy by being near a superior one!



After having been a bit forgotten, Crusher 2 heads off to bust the small sinister spaceways spaceport as well.

When a "region grab" on the map shows 43 troops in the Gurqi system, invasion is told to attack Gurqi 3. After a short while 357K vs 1775K (+10% planet type, +25% armored breakthrough, +25% special operations, +25% spacecontrol). We notice our attack strength at about 4k as more of our troops arrive. The detailed battle report is large and annoying to show, thus no image of it.

2185.09.05 We steal the operations map of our ackdarian enemies. They are not _that_ far away from the Sloes Van 6 spaceport, and will soon attack a mine of ours in the SE with a 1 frigate fleet. Scary! We propose peace, they agree.



2185.09.09 Gurqi3 is ours. The best thing is that it is a regional capital, which removes corruption. If we had a great nearby colony it would help that as well. Gurqi 5 that the Securan Harmony took is better at 83%, but only 1800M population. Being a frontier colony and all, we garrison 9 normal troops and order a defensive base on top of it.

We could probably easily take all of this empire, but for now, we are satisfied. We propose peace, and they agree.

We start to trade spice with the Tefnyl Hive.

Both northern crusher fleets have a few ships damaged. Battle 7 from Sipan head to Kal Setu, Battle 3 from Ecery heads for Gurqi 3. When there, the crushers can repair at Sipan.

Crusher 2 is in the south, sitting at a gas giant with no pirate base, but with many civilian ships, hinting that maybe a small spaceport was here quite recently. They are told to repair (will go to edop).

We notice that we are Noble. What a bunch of good guys we are!

Alzuk Authority are at Gurqi with carriers. We have some pirate work to do up north after moving a bit east, and the pirates live very close to this colony. We discover that we only got transports in the system after accidentally telling crusher 6 to repair prematurely. The invasion ships are sent away.

Some new tech, including larger troop modules. We need to retrofit again.

Savage Storm League are at Kal Setu (where they die to Crusher 1). So many spaceports to bust. The north-eastern annoyance list is getting populated.

Sinister Outlaws at Murillea in the south. They have a large spaceport just outside Gurqi (and are there as well), but we miss at least something in the south that they launched that attack from.

Battle 3 arrive at Gurqi to chase the Alzuk away as they fire on our defensive base build. And they kill the sinister outlaws constructor trying to set up a spaceport in the system.

It is 2186.02.09, and we are at peace, with pirate bases to bust.

Status

Now, that was hard. I guess I may clean up the NW, the Atuuk and the Taffys. That should prove the point that this game is over. Cashflow is worse than ever, and cash is down a bit, but taxes should go up after the small war tiredness and annoyance of fighting the securan. Gurqi 3 needs to clear a -18 from being recently invaded.



Pirate bases highlighted. We can see the additions in the north east. The annoying pirates have the 5 bases closest to our new NE outpost. The dark brown circle in the lower right are the mighty allies we had a war with.



They don't like us all that much. It reminds us to trade spice with the yellow sluken empire too.



Gurqi 3 is not bad, and will have higher tax percentage once the disappointment over conquest is overcome. The other two are far down, but the spice world makes it a great system. We are not trading spice with many empires (for a lot of trade income), but at least we got our own supply.



Lots and lots.



Colony revenue was 864K, we are down. Money is down by 300k. If war is the reason for the drop, the AI should recover and adjust taxes. Beate is down 2% in tax, for instance.

Changes in colony governors could also make the tax income go down.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 45
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/11/2014 3:08:23 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
Operation budget balance

We are not further along since the last war than the two crusher fleets of the north repairing after the Secura Utopian war. What is clear, is that we should work on the -256k cashflow the aggressive way.

We figure that we could take the Atuuk capital, and start cleaning up the NW corner. At the same time, one crusher fleet and possibly one battle fleet can work on the pirate bases bothering our new colonies (a bit further east).

Invasion is loading troops, a good amount will probably be needed for the atuuk. It could be that we underestimate that. Or overestimate.

The two battle fleets at Sipan and Ecery left eastwards to our two new systems, but there are still some defense ships. Some time is needed to get things organized.

2186.03.16 A Savage Storm frigate raids Ihoarbuz while the battle fleet is off position. We start building a defensive base on top of the colony. They confirm their spot on the hit list.

For colonization, we can colonize volcanic with the Shandar population at Ihoarbuz. We try to colonize a 93% volcanic in the Narg system, where we already got a colony. Will some useful people move in? And when will a small-ish colony building a defensive base actually complete a colony ship?



2186.04.09. Crusher 1 is ready after repairs, and heads off for the large spaceport of the Alzuk Authority just NE of Gurqi. The screenshot is busy with trade lines, but the yellow line should be visible. The base south, and the two brown on the right are also on the hit list.

In preparation for war, we send invasion 2 to Sipan to gather more of our troops in the area. Transports of invasion move back from Sipan to Gurqi to load more troops when a load order is given.



2186.08.15 Crusher 1 has arrived and started work on the large Alzuk Authority spaceport. They down the spaceport and clear the system with two damaged. 1 with one armor damaged, another crippled with no hyperdrive. It is scrapped and a replacement is ordered at Sipan Spaceport.



Crusher 1 immediately launches for the medium spaceport of the Sinister Outlaws.



2186.10.10: The medium outlaws spaceport should be an easier task. Its less powerful shield is quickly going down. Crusher 1 takes no further damage cleaning up this system.



2186.10.27 The next target up is the large spaceport of the Savage Storm League. The twist is that there is a small spaceport beneath it, and the small spaceport is targeted with the attack order.

As they are on the move, Battle 7 and the newly complete spaceport in Kal Setu, battle a sinister outlaws fleet. If there are pirate survivors, where will they return to?



2186.12.14 Crusher 1 spreads damage on both spaceports. As the smaller spaceport explodes, the larger one has 1500 shields left, but now gets full attention. 3 cruisers are damaged, one loses its hyperdrive and is scrapped when the fighting is over. Again a replacement is ordered, of course.



Not bothered by some minor losses, Crusher 1 jumps to the small spaceport nearby.



A small spaceport is no match, even for a smaller fleet, or a crusher 1 fleet that is somewhat bruised. They also finish some 10 pirate ships in the system.



2187.03.05: After verifying that there is fuel at Gorqi, they launch at the fifth spaceport of the trip, another small one.



2187.04.08 A familiar sight, crusher 1 busting a spaceport on this trip. Another small one.

When finished, we order refuel, and queue repair. Otherwise they would run out of fuel trying to reach a spaceport. We specify the repair at Sipan 4, since we have a new medium spaceport at the spice source. The northern list of annoying pirates is empty for now.

Further south, the cruel claw pillagers attacked Pismimbin with little success. They have been quiet, but now entered the annoyance list.



We discover that one of their three spaceports are gone, and send crusher 2 to their large spaceport. They also got a small spaceport not too far from where Crusher 1 is operating.

The image above is a fake, that is why there is no pirate flag. The image is shot for illustration while writing the status. But it shows where the fighting was in relation to our empire. We think Battle 8 does a perfect re-enactment of the Crusher 2 launch, before heading back to the colony. And never mind Crusher 2 which are seen very near, they are not there at all...

The troop loading? Invasion transports are working in our southern areas, and running out of fuel in the process. Some micro management to refuel them is in place (refuel order on single ships).



2187.07.07 Crusher 2 has arrived at the Cruel Claw Pillagers spaceport. They hammer the large spaceport into submission. They take only shield damage during the attack.



They immediately turn for the small spaceport nearby. Life on our "annoyance list" is a dangerous one.



2187.09.01. Many ships are present as crusher 2 attacks the small spaceport. This include two ships of the Lone Security, one of which is the blue ship seen at the lower left.



Fighting does not die out with the spaceport dead. The Lone Security is in agreement with Crusher 2 when it comes to which side to attack. Crusher 2 does not differ between pirates, though, and kill them all.

Crusher 2 takes no damage, and heads a bit north to refuel at a gas mine near Sloes van.

As the pirate busts complete, all troop transports are at Sipan. Invasion has 2625K strength, Invasion 2 has 1575K.

Is that enough for the Atuuk home world? Time will show, we will take a look before landing them, but we would be surprised if the weak Atuuk have anything near that.

How are the Grand Atuuk Territory? 9,2K military power. Their ally is Qilla domain, who lives on the eastern edge. They have one small colony and a strike fleet quite near Sipan. Another one a bit est of Sloes Van.

The first (and only?) Grand Atuuk Territory war

2187.11.11: We order Crusher 6 to attack their capital at Kal Nattu 2, and declare war. At the same time Crusher 1 is incoming, one crusher fleet leave Sipan as another is about to arrive. The explaining photo is lost in the chaos, and unlike the southern stuff this one is not easily faked.

We do not know neither colony defenses, nor troop count. This could hurt. Troop count will be checked before dropping our troops.



2187.12.09 Crusher 6 is about halfway there, and as we are about to tell the two invasion fleets to attack, we notice we got info about the structures. We spot a rather weak large spaceport, and two defensive bases. And a lot of ships. The crusher 6 order is changed to attack the spaceport. This could hurt a bit.

The two invasion fleets are told to attack the colony, but will have time to stop if things turn ugly. By a glance the troop count did not look so bad.



2188.02.09 As crusher 6 starts the battle, we spot a 17 and a 15 ship fleet at other stations in the system.



It is a bit chaotic, but one defensive base is down. The other one in the lower right is badly damaged. The spaceport is at 2721/4550 shields, and quite a few ships in Crusher 6 have taken damage.



The enemy ships originally near the capital spread out, but many have been destroyed. Even with depleted numbers this could be bad news for the carriers at the rear. The spaceport is shields down and taking damage.



As the spaceport is down, crusher 6 is not in top form, but all are alive. Their escaping ships litter the surrounding space, but about half the fleet is fighting the ships in the system.

We tell Battle 9 at beate to the SW, to blockade the capital.

We glanced at the colony when we had the preview, and we were not scared stiff. We check it now, and the listed strength is 540K. We will have troops to do three of these at once, but will drop all.

2188.03.26 The 50th Atuuk fleet busts a mining base just north of our "capital territory". "They enter our annoyance list, and we should look for their spacepo... eh no".



2188.04.22 This is not a fair matchup. All of our troops have "landed". Fighting is still ongoing with ships and mining stations.



2188.05.02 The atuuks attack our small colony at Drumon Caas 3 (in the north). We spot only frigates in the fleet.



2188.05.17: They are bombarding Narg 2, we only got a very small and slightly antique fleet and a defensive base. The defensive base goes to half shields, and see them off, some of our ships are lost. The colony shows bombard damage and report 80% out of 80% quality. That was not so bad after all. They were more "trying to bombard Narg 2".

2188.06.03 The Sinister Company raid Shecetare 3. The defensive fleet sits outside the system and is out of fuel. The SW defenses are not in top shape. We can see that they are based at Broanee sanctuary. Thanks to the expansion planner we find the Broanee system in the NW corner of the Shecetare influence circle.

How? The "Resource targets by Galaxy Priority" should show all possible mining locations not in the space of other empires (unless we have mining rights). Sort this by name, and there are Broanee.



Crusher 2 is near Sloes Van, and is told to move to the Broanee system.

The alert reader can see that this image is taken pretty much at the same time as the Battle 8 re-enactment of the Crusher 2 launch to bust spaceports further south.

2188.06.04 We have taken over the former Atuuk capital of Kal Nattu 2. The Grand Atuuk Territory is no more and we inherit all ships and bases.

We enter the ship list, and order retire for every former Atuuk ship we can find.

- 35 non-fleeted ships. All "new" ships appear not in a fleet.
- 6 exploration ships
- 3 construction ships
- 2 colony ships

And sadly, they did not have a resupply ship or three :(



The new colony is not bad at all, which is no big surprise. Development is at a low 85, and they need to work of their memory of independence to get rid of a -15 happiness modifier.

Our reputation? Noble. We are such nice guys!

It is 2188.06.06 and time for status. We are at peace.

Status

One down. The plan is to do one more war in the north to capture colonies.

The source of the substantial raid on Shecetare 1 was a surprise, if the source is indeed where the "based at" for the pirates hinted at.



Again, pirate bases highlighted.

There is no more Dark Green in the upper left. The plan is to make it less "medium blue" as well.



We are not loved across the galaxy. We can see the high trade value with Tefnyl Hive after starting spice trade some time ago. Not trading spice is an extra negative modifier with the rest (apart from Sluken Conformity).



The values reflect war with the Atuuk, since things have not had time to reset. Sipan 4 and Beate both has -15 for at war with own species, explaining a lower tax percentage. Kal Nattu 2 is still -15 after conquest, and could use some luxuries. It should sit a it below Beate since it has 10% less quality and about the same population.



There are 35 military ships, 3 constructions, 2 colony ships and a bunch of exploration ships in temporary employment until they can retire.



And the extra ships give extra maintenance, and the not yet reset war state gives worse cashflow than it will be once things settle. Cashflow was closing in on -200K before the war.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 46
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/12/2014 6:33:18 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline
Recovering from war

It is 2188.06.07 and there is work to do to set things up after war. Crusher 2 has just startet its journey west to clean up a system assumed to have pirates in it.

The main idea is to get prepared to go to a war of conquest against the Free Talfagleu Utopia, and conquer the "corner worlds" if not their whole empire. We can see their Regional capital in the west, and their capital. Powerful large spaceport with 2-3 defensive bases. Ground strength is only at the 500-700 mark. That is way less than our invasion fleet when loaded up.

If we retrofit the transports, they should increase their troop capacity with larger troop modules, but what we dropped at Kal Nattu 2, fit in the transports in the first place. And this should be enough for another world. Thus, no rush to retrofit them.

Crusher 6 had a lot of ships damaged at Kal Nattu, but lost none. They head for the Ecery spaceport to repair (the closest one). The defense fleet of Drummon Caas that helped repel an Atuuk fleet is also on its way to Ecery to repair (and to return to base). Battle 9, told to blockade Kal Nattu 2 during the invasion, is in the system.

At Kal Nattu 2 we garrison 10 of the not very powerful, normal, conquest troops, and tell both invasion fleets to load troops. We also order a defensive base on top of Kal Nattu 2.

2188.09.21 The Secura Utopia gift us 20K. It is nice to see they got money to spare. Along with the weak Riksul Colonies they are the only current allies of the Free Talfagleu Utopia. And of course, we had a war with them recently.

Without any mention, we researched Ship Scanning a while back, and retrofitted spaceports and defensive bases. We just had our second instance of identifying smugglers of pirate factions. This reminds us to retrofit the ships at the capital, they may be of old designs.

Those messages about spotting smugglers will be very common, and if not very patient, I could look into disabling them.

2188.12.06: Crusher 2 arrived at the Broanee system, and found the expected small spaceport. They start by heading for a construction ship just outside the spaceport, but it may have initiated jump already.



The construction ship slipped away, but the small spaceport is going nowhere.

At the same time we get a message that our agent Arl Varqui on his own initiative (AI) has stolen the Free Talfagley Utopia operations map. Time to have a look!

What we see? Only Medium spaceports on the "minor colonies". Strike fleets in each system in the west. Three larger fleets around Gorqi, 2 of them have about 8 troops, the other none, and they appear to refuel, blockade, and move to the Spaceport close to Gorqi. We are not scared by what we see.

After cleaning up the system and capturing a mining station, Crusher 2 moves to Schecetare 1 to restore order in the system. Pirates are around harassing a mine. The Schecetare defense fleet has refueled its first ships at a gas mine one sector away.

2189.01.09 After picking up all troops at Kal Nattu 2, we run through the troop transports in the ship list, and release and automate those that are empty. This is done for 3 members of invasion. In preparation for multiple invasion, we recruit some more troops at the dhayut and mortalen colonies around the capital. Automated troop transports should run around to gather troops until full.

2189.05.07 Waiting for fleets to get in position, we see that our buddies the Tefnyl Hive declare war on Riksul Colonies. The Free Talfagleu Utopia and some more responds to call for allies.

It is time to strike. Their allies are the Secura Utopia and Riksul Colonies, both are at war, the Utopia are in several.

The first Taffy war

2189.06.26 We declare war. The Riksul Colonies declare war on us. They are busy with another war, and got one colony near Sloes Van.



The image shows their whole empire, the capital is the one at the map edge top right.
We are very aggressive at the start, trying to strike at their spaceports apart from the capital. Numbers on the map are fleet numbers.

Crusher 1 attacks Tasshtur Sinka a good regional capital, starting from the nearby Drumond Caas system.

Battle 9 Leaves Kal Nattu to strike at the spaceport colony at Valenaar.

Crusher 6 will leave from Ecery to strike the spaceport colony at Yogame

Battle 7 is at Kal-Setu, the spice system, and strikes at the spaceport colony at Kennagar.

Battle 3 is at Gurqi and strikes at a known spaceport at Andrumida. Known because we saw a fleet with order to move to this spaceport while having their operation map.

This leaves Kal-Setu and Gurqi without ships.

We tell the defense fleet of Urukablist to move to kal-setu, it is a short jump "up right".

Battle 5 moves from Framisc Yagin, a sector south of Kal-Setu to Gorqi.

Invasion 2 with 6 transport is at Ecery, our top, big colony. Invasion is at Kal Nattu.

The goal is to grab colonies, and cripple them by busting the spaceport ones first.



2189.07.16 Crusher 1 is the first one to find its target. At Tashtur Sinika 2 they get the order to attack the large spaceport. We see two defensive bases and a strike fleet.

The lower defensive base is fast to drop, we order the 3 closest cruisers to focus at the top one.



The defensive bases and most ships are destroyed, the spaceport is shields down and is being hammered by fighters and torpedoes. At this time we tell invasion fleet to go to the colony. They have some distance to travel.



2189.08.08 A bit south Battle 9 takes on the medium spaceport and defensive base at Varlenaar 2. The fleet is told to attack the spaceport, then the ships at the bottom are told to attack the defensive base.



At the same time Crusher 6 is at Yogame 1 further north and east, and must handle a large spaceport and a defensive base. The group at the bottom focuses on the defensive base, the rest on the spaceport.



And at the same time as the others, Battle 3 finds medium spaceport and a defensive base. The defensive base is of different design, and shoots graviton beams. Again, close cruisers target the defensive base. The 70th fleet is present, making this one a challenge, as if those nasty bases are not enough.

Battle 7 still has some way to go, and we see the enemy 68th fleet on the scanner at Kal Sutu, probably moving to Kennagar where Battle 7 is heading. Our fleet has some head start, though.



2189.09.06 Battle 7 arrives at Kennagar 1 and engage the medium spaceport and defensive base.

At this time:

Crusher 1: Is finishing off the large spaceport which has a lot of modules to destroy. They also fight some ships.

Battle 3 has little success against the weird stuff at Andrumida 3, and is told to repair. We hardly see the base shields dented, and the bases use gravtion weapons to damage modules directly.

Crusher 6 has barely started.

Battle 9 has started mopping up ships and mining bases.

Invasion 2, with 895k strength is told to attack Varlenaar 2 where we see 127k strength.

2189.10.09 Invasion is at their destination and drop about 7 transports worth of content on the regional capital, and send 1 transport to finish the single troop at the other colony.

2189.12.20. We have captured the 3 invasion targets. The Taffys attack a gas mine at Drumond Caas with their 77th fleet.

The status of our fleets at this time:

Crusher 1: From 31 to 28 ships, 6 damaged. Mopping up a strike force and stuff in "our system" since we captured both colonies.

Battle 9: Killing ships in the other of "our new system". From 18 to 16 ships, 1 damaged carrier.

Crusher 6: Mopping up ships and mines, from 31 to 29 ships.

Battle 7: From 18 to 13 ships, 3 NOT damaged. They try to finished the crippled defensive base. The enemy fleet arriving (we saw it heading here) did not help, and the spaceport and defensive bases _hurt_. They will manage to finish the defensive base.

Battle 3: Back at Kal-Setu repairing. 14 of 18 ships returned. Those bases over there seemed impenetrable and of different design.

Without counting, we order 7 cruisers and 5 carriers at Sipan Spaceport nearby. And 10 cruisers at Ecery, our northernmost spaceport.

We garrison 5 troops at Varlenaar 2, and tell Invasion 2 to load at the colony.
We garrison 3 at Tashtur Sinika 3, the small colony.
We garrion 8 at the good regional capital of Tashtur Sinika 2.
And we tell Invasion Fleet to load troops. They still had 1311K strength onboard.

We queue the repairing Battle 3 to move to Kennegar to relieve the very damaged Battle 7.

We propose an end to the war with Riksul Colonies, and they accept. One southern distraction is over with, having never been a bother for us.

2190.01.16 The enemy fleet at Drumond Caas attack the defensive base, and it does not stand much of a chance. The local fleet has been sent repairing with only 2 undamaged ships. Their 68th fleet is seen refueling at a gas mine in Endilean, the system next to Drumond Caas, and a short bit north of the Crusher 1 position. The crushers have local ships to kill, and troop transports to watch over while they load. So no fleet/mine busting.

We are happy to hear that the enemy 77th fleet aims for a mining station. They have such high ambitions :)


2190.01.30 Battle 9 and invasion 2 are done in their original system. Battle 9 is told to attack the colony at Had Abbadun, invasion 2 is shortly after told to move to the star of that system. The other enemy colony had that fleet refueling, and we do not feel to go there right now.

Updates on colonies?



2190.02.09 The volcanic planet Ghoom in the Narg system, orderered to be colonized by the shandard in the last update has been colonized. Will it be populated, or just have 30M Shandar slaves?



We conquered the rather nice regional capital Tashtur Sinika 2



And the not equally nice desert world of Tashtur Sinika 3.



And to the south, the promising continental of Varlenaar 2. With atuuks, how can it have such a low population? Do the Securan enslave them as well?

Battle 7 with 3/13 ships healthy is told to repair. We leave the system until the repaired Battle 3 arrives. We later find further 3 very damaged ships of battle 7, who are down to 10/18 ships after the crippled ones are scrapped.

Crusher 6 reveal 1 troop at Yogame. Invasion sends one troop transport with 2 troops and 2 armor. After ordering it to attack, we tell it to leave Invasion, and automate it. We check the troop carriers, and the 3 automated ones are full and rejoin invasion. They will of course have to fly north.

Crusher 1 refuels at Tashtur Sinika 2 at own initiative. Fighting is a drain on fuel. How nice of the Securans to leave a store for us.

2190.03.22 Battle 9 arrive at Had Abbadun and reveal 1 troop. They engage the strike force in the system. Invasion to heads for a system nearby and sends a single transport with 4 troops to attack.

When the transport drops its load, the odds are overwhelming. It is sent to Ecery and then automated.



2190.05.01 With the invasion underway and the system "clean", battle 9 is told to attack the colony in Endilean to the south. Invasion 2 heads to the star west of this system.

We see the marker of a troop transport at Varlenaar, possibly one told to load troops before we captured it.

The light blue in Tashtur Sinika is Crusher 1 moments away from finishing off the gas mine and the last few ships.

Battle 3 struggle with 2 strike forces in Kennagar. Crusher 1 noticed the queue at the Ecery space port (builds and repairs), and heads to the system to instill law and order. Invasion fleet is told to move to the system a very short distance to the west of it.

2190.06.02 Battle 9 finds a strike force and defensive base at the colony. The 17 ship 69th fleet is refueling at a gas mine in the system. They focus on defensive base, and are attacked by some ships as news about the capture of Yogame 1 arrives. Had Abbadun 1 has also fallen.

Knowing that battle 9 will struggle to gain total control, we send 1 troop transport of Invasion 2 to attack the colony of Cleesas. It it has the usual one single troop defending. When the defensive base is destroyed, we make them take on the gas stations of the system as a fleet. There is a lot of ships, they are not in prime shape, but we jump fast between targets and can destroy their gas mines in the system.

Where did that troop transport go? We did not notice it getting killed, and can not find it.

Battle 9 takes casualties when they at last attack the gas mine where the Securan fleet refuels. After killing it, they head back for repairs with 14/18 ships in working order, and very little fuel.

The enemy 78th fleet attack a gas mining station at Sipan. Our ships present are not strong, and jump to the system next doors, ready to step in if they go for the spaceport. We see no troop transports, the colony should not be in danger.

2190.08.09 With Crusher 1 arriving at Kennagar, the damaged Battle 3 heads back to Kal-Setu to repair. This should avoid queues. There is one defending troops, and invasion next doors dispatch 1 transport with 4 troops.



We garrison troops at new colonies. Crusher 6 has 5/29 damaged, and head west to Endilean to try gain control. Invasion 2 is next doors with troops, and the troop transport sent to attack is missing. Battle 3 detours from their repair to the system to their left to check that out. There are two "small" systems there we could grab if they are not well defended with space defenses.



2190.08.28 The weakened battle 3 finds 1 troop, 1 defensive base, and 1 mine. They try to take on the defensive base, but one cruiser landed in the wrong spot. Invasion 2 sends 1 troop transport with 2 armor and 2 troops. Single transports sent are queued to move to ecery, leave the fleet, and are automated.

Fighters win the day for the brave battle 3. They are told to kill the mine, and then queued to repair.

As Kennagar falls, Crusher 1 steps a short distance SW to the Pirgetur system.


2190.10.05 We see that the Securans do try the defenses at Sipan 4. The frigates and destroyers of the defense fleet are told to attack. The ships help turn the battle. One defensive base is ok, the spaceport at 2/3 shields and the second defensive base is shields down and damaged. Some newly built cruisers and carriers also arrived, although starting with 0 shields.

We notice that there are two enemy fleets in the system.



When the second fleet attacks, the stricken defensive base looks doomed. Our carriers and cruisers are brand new and have no shields to speak of. They prevail with one lost defensive base, the spaceport at 1/3 shields, and an unknown amount of ships lost for us.



Crusher 1 finds a defensive fleet, some ships at the colony, and the 16 ship 70th fleet refueling in the system. There are no troops on the colony, but it has a hidden pirate base. Invasion sends two transports to take the colony and handle the pirates.

The mystery of the transport that was sent to attack Endillean became even more confusing, as we discover Crusher 6 there and that the colony is ours. It must have made the drop after all?

We gather the new cruisers and carriers in a temporary Battle 22. It is 22 ships, and gather at Ecery. Two carriers are repairing at Sipan.

With the builds over for the now Battle 22 ships, most fleets are heading to Ecery to repair. Crusher 1 has some work still in Pirgetur.

We order a new defensive base at Sipan 4 to replace the one lost. Another visit by the 70th fleet is quickly taken care of. We notice that the 10 ship battle 7 is at Sipan. That is nice right now.

2191.05.04 Crusher 1 is on its way to repair at Ecery. Some enemy ships are in the systems of our conquered colonies. Only the capital and that painful eastern colony, and a new one right above it, remain.

2191.08.25 Repairing, refueling.. at Ecery...



2191.11.20 It is time to deal a proper blow.

With the exception of 1 carrier with refuel order.

27 ships of Crusher 1
29 ships of Crusher 6
12 ships of battle 3
14 ships of battle 9

All attack the capital planet at once, starting at Ecery. The enemy die at Sipan 4 or spend their time busting gas mining stations, while we are on a proper offensive.

2192.01.14 Secura Utopia offer a lot of contested mines (from our conquests, we assume) for declaring war on Riksul Colonies. We reject.



2192.02.08 This is how a proper attack on capital defenses can look. It is overwhelming force.

We check the capital, and find 514 troop strength.. 1685 strength of invasion are told to attack. Invasion 2 also attack, but two transport attack the minor colony of Umajika, which is recruiting 2 troops.

When the battle is over, we find 3 damaged ships in our 4 attack fleets. Battle 3 is short a ship. We tell the two crushers to bust the defensive base at Umajika, and let the rest work on the large number of mines in the system. Soon they are all doing that.

2192.04.22 With the invasion fleets closing in, and the mines dead, Crusher 1 and Crusher 6 take off for the very painful structures at Andrumida 3. 27+29 ships hopefully do better than the 18 ship battle fleet that did little damage, and got away with 1 lost and a lot damaged. Battle 3 takes off for a gas mining station we see them refuel at near Yogame. Then it is queued to repair (its one damaged ship).

2192.05.13 We have landed troops at Umajika. they recruit troops, but it is 551 vs 83.



2192.05.20 The capital itself looks like this. Not exactly an even battle..

2192.08.14 We have taken over Talfagleu 5, the former capital. We garrison some troops, and load troops with invasion.

2192.08.25 Incoming again at Sipan. We thought battle 22 was at Ecery, but they are at Sipan. That explains the rather swift clearance of the last attack wave.



At the same time, the crushers have arrived at the new capital. This time the shield of the defensive base is at least moving... They manage to blow them up without too much ceremony. There are a whole 3 troops defending.



One ship short, and with about 10 damaged, Crusher 6 jumps to the new system just north. It appears to be a new colony of Ugnari. We tell invasion to attack the new capital, and a transport with 3 armor attacks the new colony.

We notice a ruin with a huge troop "boost" at the new capital. We doubt their 100% combat bonus while defending matters too much.



2192.11.10 Our mine reveals the Cruel Claw Pillagers trying to set up a small spaceport north of Gurqi. We are not happy about this, and the protective Battle 5 launches to attack the construction ship. We can see the main combat area, with the invasion fleets incoming.

2193.01.16 The tiny colony of Zukarb 1 is conquered.

2193.01.25 Invasion has landed troops to dominate with 2420 vs 67 at the new capital.

2193.01.26 The capital is ours. The Free Talfagleu Utopia is no more.

A final status and summary

This is the end of this AAR. It was clear before declaring the wars that the game was won. With this war we wiped the empire that competed with the Haakonish for being 2nd or 3rd in strength. What made it somewhat hurtful was that we probably lagged a bit in tech compared with our enemies.

Research status:

In energy, our guys have just started on the "end game reactor" research, and has done the jump blocking at that level. Too bad we never got capitals that use the jump blocking piece...

In weapons research, we were ready for the "end game items", and almost done with researching the torpedoes. The always lagging high tech (since the colonization setbacks) is almost done with the 4th tier of techs.

About the game. It started with many, near pirates. Slow research and many independents. My dhayut had poor reproduction rate, and the two early colonies made the struggle with the pirates very long and hard. Then, as we began to gain control and downed the first large spaceport, there was Sipan sitting there, with the AI empires unable to grab it. Then there was Beate and Ecery under pirate control. Suddenly we became rich, and it was just work to grind down the pirates. By the time it could be a good idea to wage war, I was already dominant. I guess I won't try many pirates again. And for the next new games, no respawning pirates, not many independent, and maybe not allowing new empires to spawn.

Those independents benefited me a lot. If the AI managed to take the independents, and there was no "new empires" allowed to spawn, there could have been a very powerful Securan empire in the north. Instead it was 3 somewhat powerful ones. The AI also appear to suffer more from the many pirates, being unable to get rid of them. Strike fleets against pirate bases?!



The NW is prettier in red. It removes one front to protect during war. The top left colonies are very safe, and they are very profitable. We added a new regional capital that would be untouchable during war.



Still a satisfactory reputation. They don't like us that much.



The regional capital at Tashtur Sinika 2 shows its power, and it is not hit much by the war since it is only 10M securan and the rest Atuuk. Ecery has a proper penalty alongside the securan conquests (at war with own species still). 51% corruption does not help Talfagleu 5.

Pirgetur 2 already has 725M Dhayut that breed (slowly) and will be very nice with some more inhabitants.

The colonies founded when we finally colonized has reached about 3300M population and are getting there. Not enough to be on the front page, though. The newest colony of Ghoom has received 168M atuuk and 60M dhayut and would be fine with time to grow. Even the very slow starter of Dacshii 2 has 1222M now.



A lot of ships hired from the securans. That makes this a mess.



The account has not suffered much, but the income suffers from war. We gained some very good colonies, with one conquest topping the current list. We would do fine once the war effects settle down and we retire the former securan ships. Unless they have some resupply ships we can keep...

Anyways, this game will not be played again, there is nothing to achieve apart from a similar battle against the Haakonish where the struggle will be fuel without the support of resupply ships. The Taffies were handily placed, near our own spaceports. We had no fuel issues at all, except maybe a couple of ships refueling at the gas mine in the Ecery system, rather on at the spaceport.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 47
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/13/2014 12:36:36 AM   
FingNewGuy


Posts: 183
Joined: 4/11/2014
From: Boulder, CO
Status: offline


Awesome! Quite the read, but well worth it. Thank you for this!

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 48
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/16/2014 6:27:34 AM   
Sirian


Posts: 174
Joined: 11/29/2012
Status: offline
Thank you for this entertaining and informative after-action-report!

_____________________________


(in reply to FingNewGuy)
Post #: 49
Page:   <<   < prev  1 [2]
All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series >> After Action Reports >> RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation Page: <<   < prev  1 [2]
Jump to:





New Messages No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages Locked w/o New Messages
 Post New Thread
 Reply to Message
 Post New Poll
 Submit Vote
 Delete My Own Post
 Delete My Own Thread
 Rate Posts


Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI

1.156