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Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation

 
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Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/28/2014 7:20:34 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Title: A shadows AAR with some Automation.

In this I hope to write an AAR that may be helpful for new players, and also show that it is possible to have fun without minimaxing everything, and leaving some things to the AI.

I prefer to automate a few things to keep "in line" with what the AI empires do, but I pick my spots to hopefully shine.

I do not use a default start, since I want one step up in difficulty, and to slow down research. I also prefer to avoid the Shakturi and Original storylines. I will tweak the start to mimic what was the default shadows start (more pirates).


Game Setup

Some things are more or less random... The screens from top to bottom, left to right.

Custom themes? None.

A custom game as standard empire.
Irregular galaxy because I feel like it.
10x10, 700 stars. The old default
PreWarp expansion
Restless aggression
Hard difficulty
No difficulty scaling, as there is no victory.
Expensive Research Cost
Normal Space creatures.
Many Pirates, starting nearby

Colony Prevalence: Normal
Indepentent Alien Life: Plentiful
Colony Influence Range: 100% as suggested
Colonization range: 2.00 sectors

Race: Dhayut

My Empire:

Empty Name.
Bright Red Main Color, that is the Dhayut default color.
Galaxy starting location random.
Home system: Normal
Tech level: PreWarp
Corruption: Normal
Government: Random

Other Empires:

11 randomly generated.
Allow independent alien colonies to start new empires: Checked

Victory Conditions:

All off.

Original story: Off
Return of the Shakturi story: Off
Disaster: On
Race events: On
Shadows Story events: On

Allow tech trading: On
Allow Giant Kaltors at game start (NOTICE!): On (newbies should turn it off)

Why

I up the difficulty some for my own enjoyment. The AI is improved in the Universe release, but I am a bit unsure if it really matters. I do this with a bit better pirates and more difficulty, and what is done here should work for newer players on a bit easier settings (distant pirates, not many pirates, maybe weak as well).

Having plentiful alien life and slower research should help the pirates too. They earn money on exploiting small colonies and independents, and this gives more targets, and more time to exploit them until the empires reach space.

I pick Dhayut since I have never played them, they are bright red and easy to spot in default colors, and they are violent. I am usually not a violent player (I like to hurt those that attack me), so hopefully they serve as inspiration. Their victory conditions (unused) are about conquering colonies and enslaving people, which I will keep in mind. Also, they have a limited lineup of friends (other bugs only).


Automation and House Rules

I always play with house rules. I don't tech trade for money, but may tech trade to help an ally. I prefer to not focus on capital words until that is mostly what is left. I prefer a "clean border" between myself and other empire, so I try to grab border worlds.

I don't like losing colonies, but accidents happen.

I won't ever change government. If someone forces me to, I will keep whatever I end up with.

For automation, I will automate:
- Intelligence Missions
- Colonies - Facility Building (with defaults)
- Colonies - Tax Rates
- Research
- Design
- Troop Recruitment
- Characters
- Population policies

Edit: Troop recruitment ended up on manual. First an accident, then on purpose.
(end edit)

I set boarding and capture (bottom) to always enlist, and to always disassemble at base for tech and for resources. If we board any ship it should give us a tech benefit at retirement.

I may manually order troops in a pinch.

I automate Explorers and Construction ships with few and noted exceptions. The very start has an exploration mission, constructors will be poked by queued gas mines on possible sources, and the military may draft constructors to build monitoring stations and similar.

I may at some point mess a bit with single designs.

The Start




We start at Sollost 2, a desert planet in the B5 sector. That is far left but not at the edge, and middle height. There are stars all around the galaxy with no pattern, as the galxy is irregular.

What we do will come in the next post.


< Message edited by Bingeling -- 6/2/2014 7:36:15 PM >
Post #: 1
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/28/2014 7:21:12 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Plan for early days

Up to this point the game has been started, I have clicked start, and paused the game.

We notice we are under Feudalism.

-20% war weariness
-10% maintenance cost
-10% approval
-25% research speed
+40% troop recruitment

Unpopular, slow research, quite good at war related activities.

The colonies screen reveals that we assimilate insects and enslave the rest.

The plan for the pre warp phase is to get into space properly in an uneventful way. I find no joy in watching ships crawl around the system. There is nothing wrong with starting off with a constructor if that is what you want.

Since everyone suggests to use a lot of pirate protection deals, I will keep that to the bare minimum. A good pirate is a dead pirate. However, at least one deal is likely to be made.

As we don't deal with pirates, I go to empire policy, war and attacks. All the pirate offer settings are set to "Never". No smuggling, no attack missions, etc. At least not by the AI. I could set up a smuggling mission if ever in dire need of one.

Action

I won't report every completed research or little detail, but I will at the start report every action taken. As the game progresses reporting has to be at a higher level, since more things will happen.

It is 2100.01.07

We need to explore the system, and for that we need a spaceport. A spaceport with some early researched tech is also good at keeping pirates away.

We order a small spaceport to our capital at Sollost 2. Small, because it is faster to build than medium.

2100.03.17. We have a breakthrough in shield research. Yay!

2100.03.27.



The spaceport is unfinished, small, and with no shields. We have no option but to pay. They leave.

As soon as they warp away, we cancel the protection agreement.

2100.06.15. The small spaceport is complete. If we did not write an AAR we would have remembered to buy two explorers at this time.

After fumbling once, we order an energy research station underneath the spaceport. We need energy research to get out of the system.
We then tell the spaceport to retrofit to medium spaceport.

2100.08.03. The research station is complete, and we look at research stations, the rightmost tab in the research window.



To research at maximum, the sum of the 3 white values (circled) must be higher than the potential on the right (circled). We can easily see that we are way below that target.

A look at the small and medium spaceport designs reveal that we go from 1 to 3 energy labs. So the new spaceport line after retrofit is 60-60-60 (180 in total). With the current facilities we are then at 300 total (120+180).

Since guns are kind of nice too, we order one more energy station, and one weapons station. Research will be proportional according to the white values. Both are built under the spaceport. The third research station only gives a minor benefit (60+60+300 is 420 at a 431 potential), but we choose to accept this as we waste money on little else.

Edit: Later I will look at the above myself, and wonder where I got the 431 potential from. It said 493 in the image just now. Maybe it dropped right afterwards or something

Another option would be to upgrade to large spaceport, but that can wait. It could remove the need for the third station.

We also remember to book 2 explorers like we should have done when the small spaceport was complete...

2100.11.01. The effect of the energy lab and the research breakthrough in shields are easily seen. Shield research is way ahead of the others.



2100.11.04. The two explorers are complete.
There is only one unexplored ruin in the system. One explorer is ordered to explore that (control right click), and is then automated (A). The other is just automated.

2100.12.23. The ruin var very close:



But since research is automated, we do nothing. The AI should give it a very high priority, though.

2101.02.11 The research for Corvidian shields is complete. We are happy to see that the AI moves on to Warp Field Precursor

We are promted to retrofit all by a suggestion. We refuse to do that, as that would send our explorers back home. They better keep exploring.

I open the ship and bases list. Filter spaceports, retrofit the spaceport.
Then filter research stations, uses a shift-click to select all 3 and do retrofit. One is however not yet complete.

2101.03.08. The final research station is complete. The first shield is a key upgrade, and we order it to retrofit.

We notice that a bunch of freighters and stuff has been ordered by the civilians. There is not much work for them to be had, but the mining ships are welcome.

... We are waiting for warp field precursors.

2101.10.19. Our exporer finds and takes control of an abandoned frigate. We tell it to retire at our spaceport.

2102.02.02. Celebration!



Why? Because there are 3 strategic resources to pay attention to, all which are mostly on continental worlds and somewhat uncommon. We are a desert race, and thus does not start on a continental. But in our system is Weirujum, with all 3 of the "scarce" ones. Carbon fiber, chromium, and silicon.

For now, though. We have no ships apart from the 2 explorers and the discovered frigate heading home to be retired.

The AI wants 2 constructors. We wait for the bubble drive. It also wants an orbital defensive base, but we are in no hurry with that either. We doubt there is a major pirate assault or an alien invasion anytime soon. The shielded, medium space port should hopefully fend off any minor pirate attack.

2103.01.09. We spot an explorer from the Lone Dagger Ravagers, a new pirate crew, in the system.
Precursors are researched to 40%...

21.03.03.11 We are satisfied that our spaceport fires at the pirate explorer as it explores our capital planet. It inflicts minor damage, but the explorer jumps away.

We are in no hurry to retrofit as armor is researched. We are happy that energy torpedoes are next in weapons research.

2103.04.30 Disassembling the alien frigate gives a bonus in countermeasures. Enough to finish the research (that we never started) and we got access to this new component. A good benefit from the useless non-warp frigate.

As explorers drop by to refuel, we tell them to retrofit.

2103.09.24. Transport Systems is finished in research, the AI moves to colonization.

2103.10.20. A lone trader arrives to refuel at a research station.



We can see the trader approaching for refuel, the exploration ships sitting idle alongside a bunch of freighters, and the research stations hiding beneath the spaceport. Since the exploration ships are idle at the capital, they are probably done with the home system.

Being a bit bored, I select incoming mining ships, double click the selection window to see them in the ship list, and view their cargo.



2104.08.18. We spot an exploration ship from the Grim Guild. The third pirate crew to visit. But still only the first pirate attack that was prevented with a quick protection deal.

2104.12.09 Both the Lone Dragger Ravagers, and the Grim Guild offer information about some independent colony, but we don't deal with pirates. We may not kill them much since we lack military ships, but we don't deal with them...

There was a pirate crew demaning protection money, but without any ship presence. They must confuse us with someone else. A bit later, the Grim guild tries to threathen us with an exploration ship. Weird guys.

2105.06.20. We reserach energy torpedoes, and are over 90% on the way to warp field precurors. Go! Go! Since explorers are at home and idle, we approve retrofit at this time.

2105.11.30 Warp Precursors are available.



These are slow and short ranged, but at least allows fast travel inside the system.

We order:

1 Construction ship to be automated

6 escort to form our first fleet.

We choose escorts because of our tiny build size (160) that can be seen at the top of the design screen. We are so eager that the AI designer has not yet had time to make designs, but a frigate will not fit properly to 160 size with a hyperdrive.

My way of organizing a fleet like that is: Open ship list, filter on military. Sort on firepower. The 0 strength new builds are on top. Shift click and control click as in any windows list to multi select. Set the fleet in pulldown. Notice that you can also toggle automation in the ship list, handy when dropping ships from fleets and automating them.

I select the fleet, press ctrl-1 to bind the fleet to the 1-key. You can bind any object to the number letters this way, I use them for my main battle and invasion fleets that will be seen later in the AAR unless something goes very wrong.

We ponder the lack of pirate action. No pirate construction ship to build mines in our system, and no pirate ships apart from explorers after the first visit.

2106.03.11. The escorts are done, and we retrofit them with a ctrl-right click order. It would have been a better idea to wait for the design update before ordering them...

2106.08.28. First Action. A pirate frigate arrives and attacks the capital.



It is annihilated by the spaceport and the 1st fleet that hangs around until there is a mine to protect.
From the color, it is clear that it was the grim guild. No raiders landed on the colony.

2106.12.13. We discover giant kaltors in the system. 1st fleet jumps at it (engagement stance) and kills both. 3 escorts are damaged, one crippled with a destroyed warp drive. It was the fleet leader, and we drop it from the fleet to crawl for repairs on its own. If there was not the fact for a fleet admiral present on the ship, I would probably scrap it.

2107.04.30. The construction ship is complete but without warp drive. It is told to retrofit and is then automated.

The first thing its wants to do is to build a gas mining station at a gas giant (wth hydrogen and caslon). I park the 1st fleet there until something happens.

2107.07.18



An exploration ship has bravely jumped to the closest system on warp drive. It ends up under attack by a pirate resupply ship.
Not something to hunt with 6 escorts on warp drives... Or rather 5 escorts, the 6th is crippled and trying to get back to the spaceport.

2110.02.01 Another celebration!
Hyperdrives are at 33%, and we get a critical breakthrough giving free crash research. A very welcome speed boost to a large reserach project.

2111.01.23. The damaged escort from the kaltor battle is getting close to the capital. Not much more than 5 years after getting damaged. In not too much time the escort fleet will be back at 6!

2111.02.27. Hyperdrives at 67%. Where are the pirates? This will hopefully summon them. There is now a number of mines in the system for them to prey on.

2111.06.07. We have for a while wondered why we are pretty poor (13 185). Now we also wonder why our spaceport looks so large. The AI has retrofitted the medium spaceport to large automatically. One way to try avoid this is probably to edit the minimum population for large spaceport in the Construction part of the Empire Policy screen.

Of course, 6 idle escorts, 3 research bases, Feudalism, hard... This does not help the economy either.

With the large spaceport we are researching way over the cap, but we keep the two energy and single research station to tweak the research that way. The spaceport alone is 80+80+80, research potential at 445.

We are not worse off than lowering the tax a tad would probably not hurt, since we grow slowly. But what do we know? We got the tax setting automated :) A Dhayut feature is that they every now and then have 2 years of increased aggression and population growth, which helps a bit.

2111.09.03 Another pirate explorer introduces us to the Ikoriun Ravagers. As long as it is only explorers arriving, they don't bother us much.

The pirate explorer tries to explore our capital, which is the last thing it does. Fighters help finish it off, we have had the basic star fighters researched for quite a while, and they are on our spaceport.

2111.11.22 The more the merrier. The Sinister Outlaws shows themselves in exploration mode. More food for the spaceport incoming? Sure thing, that one did not last long.

2112.03.04. We are ready for space as we research the Gerax Hyperdrive. Rejoice! We are happy to see the research department (AI) moving on to space construction.

At the same time we have for a while wondered why we got energy collectors. As far as we can se we have:

- Not researched it (shields, then warp stuff)
- Not reverse engineered it (that was countermeasures)
- Not stolen it with spies (no signs of any AI spy activity against the pirates)

Enough for this episode. Pirates did not find us, maybe we find them when going into space?

Status

I will end most if not all posts with some screenshots of the empire status.










< Message edited by Bingeling -- 6/4/2014 7:48:55 AM >

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 2
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/28/2014 7:22:47 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		If you read this AAR, and love it, hate it, have questions, want to mock me, or something else. Please comment.

Feeling lonely in an AAR thread is a bad feeling

For any late arrivals, spotting my long posts should be easy enough anyways.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 3
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/28/2014 7:34:49 AM   
Icemania


Posts: 1847
Joined: 6/5/2013
From: Australia
Status: offline 		This is great Bingeling! It shows a huge contrast to my style ... but this flexibility is part of what makes Distant Worlds such a good game. Please keep it going to the end, I'll certainly be checking in to read every update!

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 4
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/28/2014 7:57:31 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		I can't promise to take it to "the end", but I will take it to "some end".

At some point a successful games become boring at it is time to stop.

(in reply to Icemania)
Post #: 5
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/28/2014 3:50:44 PM   
Werewolf13

 

Posts: 511
Joined: 7/31/2005
Status: offline 		I'm new to DW. Read two AAR's so far and surprisingly in both the players have essentially told the Pirates to PACK SAND! Which goes against everything else I've read when it comes to just starting out a new system and the almost universal advice to pay off the pirates.

Considering that the pirates have pretty much handed me my ass without even breaking a sweat in the starts I've made I believed the advice.

Keep it up Bingeling: Lots of newbies to DW now - we need all the help we can get and AAR's are a good and FUN way to get it.

< Message edited by Werewolf1326 -- 5/28/2014 4:51:15 PM >

_____________________________

Freedom is not free! Nor should it be. For men being men will neither fight for nor value that which is free.

Michael Andress

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 6
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/28/2014 4:45:48 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Thanks for the feedback.

This game had zero pirate attacks in prewarp apart from the first one which is quite scripted. They are not always like that. That being said, for a long time they had little to attack. I did expect maybe some pirate constructor building a mine, or them attacking my mines once built, though.

But losing a single mine is not the end of the world.

I can promise that we will see more to the pirates as the game moves on, since I have played a bit further...

(in reply to Werewolf13)
Post #: 7
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/28/2014 7:56:05 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Out of the system experience

It is 2112.03.05 and we have just researched the gerax hyperdrive. The next energy research projects should be much faster to complete, since the two basic hyperdrive technologies are very expensive. The other very expensive technology is colonization in high tech, which is only at 19% after having a very low priority in the pre warp phase.

Total Research Capacities are 200-320-80

The research cap is 448.

The spaceport alone is 80+80+80.

Since designs are not modified, we scrap one energy base and build a high tech base. We will have a capacity much higher than we can utilized, but at least the output will be balanced.

There is a scientist on one of the stations, better make sure to scrap the other one :)

A quick way to verify if a design has a proper hyperdrive, is by opening it, and looking at the blue hyper speed on the right. 12500 is the basic gerax drive, those lacking enough energy may be at like 8k, but warp bubble drives are only around 1000.

Among the designs...

The escort has a hyperdrive.
The frigate has no warp thing at all, probably due to size issues.
The exploration ship got hyperdrive.
The construction ship has hyperdrive, but lacks speed. A reactor upgrade would work wonders, as we only got basic space reactor.

So, I am not fond of escorts, but it is what we have. Once we complete the spaceyard research project we should be able to at least build some frigates.

I manually tell the two explorers to retrofit. The construction ship is on a mine building mission, but is in space and is not building, so that is interrupted to retrofit also.

We got a modest 9k cash, but order 5 more exploration ships, which spends almost all our money. The AI wants another construction ship, but it will have to manage with just one for the time being. Cashflow is slightly positive, and we should also be able to afford something else once we got a larger shipyard.

A large (for a poor empire) sum of cash appears, probably because civilians buy their new hyperdrives. There is a short build queue at the spaceport.

2112.08.06. As new and old explorers spread out into the nearby system, we meet explorers of two new pirate crews, and find our first pirate mines. The 6 current escort stays at home.

We spot an independent colony of 309M dhayut at the northern edge of our capital circle. We dream of a troop carrier to bring some troops in to conquer them, but have no troop ship design at this size.

The pirate resupply ship is still sitting idle in the star system next to ours. Resupply ships are powerful, 6 escorts are not.

There is another Dhayut Independent with 769M population a bit to the south. Both independents have pirates in attendance.
We also find a base of our initial pirate contact, a bit to the east.

2113.01.21. Space construction is at 50%, and we have 22k cash. We book a second construction ship.

2113.01.22. So much for 50% research progress, back to 6% after a setback in research.



The local area at this time. We can see the two independents circled, and the pirate flag marking the known pirate base.

All attack messages on explorers are easily ignored. They are good at evasion, go into dangerous systems, and are easily replaced if they die.

2113.10.04 A mine in our asteroid field at home was attacked. We think that the mine was lost, but our 1st fleet of 6 puny escorts killed the pirate. At least he will not return.

2113.12.22 Pirates, ever more pirates. But only the one attack on a mine. We have now met 9 different pirate groups.

Research is focusing on ground combat technology. They must look forward to invading those independents.

2114.04.15 Pirates sold info about us to another empire. We now know of the Mortalen empire. They may be future allies of ours.

2114.05.25 In similar way we get info about the Free Talfagleu Utopia, inhabited by some space hippies called Securans.

2114.09.15 Rejoice. Space construction is complete, and we increase build size from 160 to 230.

We soon get the retrofit suggestion that signals that the AI designer has done its job. We can now build destroyers and troop transports, and the frigate got hyperdrive like the rest of them.

The destroyer size is at 230, the max build size. The frigate is at 225. This means that they are about the same size until we get even larger build sizes. The AI has removed items from the destroyer design to get it inside the build limit.

Destroyer? 13 sprint speed, 78 firepower, 692 maintenance cost.
Frigate? 21 sprint speed, 68 firepower, 716 maintenance cost.

For now we prefer the frigate, but the destroyer is probably a better long term solution. The destroyer has 1 torpedo and blasters, the frigate only blasters.

We spend most of our 35K cash on 10 frigates and 2 troop transports. After booking them, the frigates are added to the 1st fleet.

We notice that the known pirate spaceport is large with 5900 shields. 10 frigates and 6 escorts does not seem enough to destroy it. But they should be able to escort the troop transports to the independents...

2114.10.28. A spy returns with storage tech from some pirate crew. It puts completion of that at around 50%.

2115.01.15. The first 9 frigates are done, we are waiting for the two troop transports.

3 destroyers and 3 escorts are split into the 2nd fleet.
We spot two pirate construction ships of different groups in a nearby system, but choose to go mine hunting. Construction ships are prime targets, but are tricky to kill early on due to good shields.

2nd fleet moves to a system out west where we know the local pirates got a mine.
1st fleet moves to the east to attack a mine of the same crew lit up by an explorer in the system.

2115.03.09 The troop transports are complete and are automated to load themselves with troops. The constructor of our pirate target group shows up in the capital system, but we ignore it since it will try mine a planet where we already got a mine, poor intel on their part. Our mititary ships are out on attack missions, remember...

Ouch, it is not the same construction ship we saw moments ago, because that one is still shown in the other system. They got 2 construction ships

2115.04.02



We see the 2nd fleet on the left having just lit up the system and thus the mine. They have a fresh order to attack it. The larger 1st fleet on the right is just outside the target system, we can see the blue-ish color of the pirate mine to their right along side our explorer symbol.

The two fleets approach their targets at the same time

This is where the reader should imagine a nice shot of puny frigates attacking a mine. The image is nowhere to be found.

2115.04.25 As the lead ships of the 2nd fleet open fire on their target, news of the destruction of the other mine appear.

1st fleet is told to refuel (at the gas mine in the capital system, by own choice). The 2nd fleet refuels at a nearby mine.

One lost ship location revealed from killing 2 mines.

One transport has 4 troops, the other only 1.

We notice what we knew already. Escorts have few fuel cells and worse range than frigates, who again has worse range than larger ships. We use the ship list to quickly move all escorts to 2nd fleet, and all frigates to 1st fleet. This way all fleet members have the same range.

It will take some moves to sort out the locations of the ships as fleet members now head for separate gas mines. Once refueled, ships will go to the fleet leader. 2nd fleet (now escorts) was heading to a gas mine to our left. The 1st fleet is heading to the capital. We change leadership of the 2nd fleet (ctrl-right click with the new leader selected) to an escort that is heading for the capital, which ought to have the 2nd fleet members end up in the capital system.

Moving ships between fleets like this is reserved for the early game with crap escorts in use, hopefully we will grow and prosper and some day be able to afford some proper fleets.


Operation first assault

2115.07.23

Why assaulting instead of colonizing, when the population is the same as the empire majority? One reason is that colonization research is at 38% so no colonization ship is available. Another reason is that any independent colony is likely to be swarming with pirates, and colonization ships flee at any sign of hostility. A third reason is that troop invasions are quicker, and we are supposed to be a violent bunch.

The catch is a bit worse empire reputation, but some pirate killing should easily offset that.

The 1st fleet of 10 frigates is fully fueled, but the frigates are at two locations. They are however approximately the same distance from the target. They are told to move to the dhayut system, which will make them land on the star.

After a short wait, the full troop transport is told to attack the independent. We hope there is just 1 troop defending (it was the last time we saw it).

Doing this, any pirates present should be busy fighting the 1st fleet near the star, and the troop transport can just slip in. We also queue a return to the capital on the troop transport so that it will not stay in the system after dropping its load.

And yes, the frigates and the troop transport got the same hyperspeed, or this could get embarrassing :)

Freighters insist on visiting independent colonies. That is a bad, bad, idea, but could help our economy when they need to replace their losses.



We can see the 1st fleet marker on its way to the independent in the lower right corner. To its left are fleet members that launched form the gas mine creating the fuel symbol in the top left. A bit behind is the troop transport with attack order.

First wildlife outside our first kaltors are found by a construction ship quite a bit to the left of our circle. More kaltors...

As the leading edge of the 1st fleet enter the dhayut system, we verify that the colony is defended by 1 green milita.



We see the main body of the 1st fleet having landed, and we can't easily see that defenders are there.
The troop transport har just arrived outside the colony.
The 3 cruisers coming from the gas mine out west are on their very final approach.

Just one small problem:



That is a very powerful pirate capital ship, even if low on shields. We tell the 1st fleet to refuel, and hopefully most will get back home in one piece. The troop transport is still on attack vector, but the pirates are focusing elsewhere.

2 frigates die, another had a close call having components disabled. The troop transport barely escapes after dropping its load, as the distraction by the 1st fleet was a rather short visit. The capital ship has 512 firepower, the 9 remaining frigates has a total of 280. Not a fair fight. The capital also have fighters and a hyper deny thing. Lets hope they never decide to test what is stronger between their capital ship and our capital spaceport...



The ground combat should work, but we won't control the skies of that system with the pirate capital present. We can see that there is a pirate structure on the colony, that will be attacked later unless it disappears at takeover.



The pirate facility disappeared at capture. Too bad it is a crap 65% colony, but almost 900m population is a good addition.

As the survivors heads home, we consider our short term options. As long as the pirate capital stays in the new system, there is no use in flying there. The troops will be hard to recover.

Our cash is low at 2500, but there is hopefully a lot of private shipbuilding incoming due to the new colony. Our cashflow is not pretty.

We pay 6k maintenance for 8 frigates, and 3k for 6 escorts. The escorts sucks and are not a long term solution in any way. The ship list is used to send them into retirement. After they finish off a pirate in the home system, that is. The frigates are soon back home.

We are proud to announce that our reputation is "Dubious". Getting there.

The capital ship pirates are not our local guys with a known base. And the local guys are not very strong, and not a major target. Not that we could kill their spaceport with 8 frigates, anyways.

A quick check on our new colony shows the capital and friends still there, and a new pirate facility under construction. We go to colony details, facilities tab, to attack the facility. Battle strengths are 4k vs 121k to our advantage, an easy victory.

We will probably have to do that again, and again as long as they rule the skies there, but at least they should pay a good amount of cash for each new build.

2116.02.19. A setback in colonization research, ensures that we will not found any colonies on our own for a while. Back to 7%.

We lack troops at the capital to make an invasion on the other independent.

Also, the pirate capital is parked above our new colony, making travels there a risky business, as some refueling explorer can inform of after barely escaping alive.

2116.04.12 A transport has managed to lift 3 troops at the capital. We try a new independent invasion, this time to the north. We know that the same crew from the other colony is present, but the capital ship is still to the south.

The attack pattern is repeated, fleet to the star, trailing transport attacks the colony.

2116.05.11. The pirate presence takes a toll on our explorers. Only 4 remains, and they are told to retrofit as proton thrusters are researched. Some better thrusters should increase their chance of escaping. This is while the attack force heads for the new target, so the ship list is used to do partial retrofits.

Explorers poking into our target system, reveal 1 troop and a pirate facility. And 2 frigates and an escort from the pirates.

We order 6 more exploration ships for a total of 10. Until the next one is killed...



The pirates were hunting our explorer, and the fleet attacks. Our lead ship takes a beating, and we fear that the pirates will jump off at any moment in chase of the explorer. Pirate ships are still more advanced than ours, and hurts...

After a classical case of "we attack you, and you attack me" with the fleets swapping positions, one ends up attacking our transport as it closes in.



Troops are dropped, and with the 1st fleet to the rescue, the pirate leaves on low shields. The ground battle is 15 vs 59 to our advantage.
This time our fleet is briefly present and give 25% space control bonus. The attacker needs a decent advantage in power, and 3 times should be more than enough.

As we win the colony, two pirates die after messing with the 1st (and only) fleet.



We attack the base, and discover that we may have underestimated our opponents.
The based is owned by our first pirates met, not the ones that had ships above the colony and owns the big capital ship.

The attack does not go well at all. We need more troops, and we do not have a lot of troops at the moment. The main danger now is that the pirates grab control of the colony from having the correct structure. The hope is that these guys are not that rich, and can't afford it. Since the first days of pre warp we have yet to see a military ship of theirs, which may indicate that they are pretty broke.

The light blue (base owner) constructor drops by at half shields, 1st fleet takes a shot.



The constructor is slow to respond, and things looks promising...
... and the constructor dies. This is a huge blow to this faction, but we have seen two constructors of their's. We are amazed at the simple kill as we expected a construction ship to turn and flee.

At this time a 7 ship pirate fleet roams over our southern colony, but the capital ship is nowhere to be seen.

We manually order two troops at the new colony Arexie to replace those lost during the pirate assault.

Frigates of the grim guild die as they appear at the northern colony, that is the capital ship guys, not the facility owners. We will make sure that the nasty pirate capital ship is not killed off in a quick report like this.

It is time for some decisions, so this is a good spot for a status.

Status

We are low on troops, and must consider whether to interfere with the AI recruiter and spam some troops. The southern colony got 5 troops that are hard to fetch, the capital got 2, the northern one is recruiting two to replace the ones lost. The southern one could need some troops as unless we manage to fend off the pirate presence, new pirate structures are likely to appear.

10 troops or so would be needed to bust the pirate base, if not more. Armored forces are 70% complete, but that is probably not for this battle.

Screen for screen:



Our struggling empire. We have no information about anything else in the galaxy. The left edge of the image is the left map edge. On the vertical dimension we are a bit above the middle of the map (sectors 4 and 5 out of 10).

We have not explored far away yet, and it would be nice to find the capital of some other empire so that our explorers can refuel there. They try to refuel at independents, and those are crawling with pirates. We have, however, conquered the independents we have found, but one is still crawling with pirates. And the other may be as well, if we just give the pirates some time.



We have to current pirate opponents. One is the Najarca Council (bottom). They own the ground facility on our colony, we know where their base is, and we killed one construction ship of theirs.

The other crew with the capital ship is the Grim Guild (dark purple). They are a much more powerful group, but the capital ship is a big part of their military strength.

We have yet to discover the whereabouts of the other empires, and forgetting to automate the new explorers did not help. But not much time passed with them sitting idle outside the capital.



The two new colonies are nothing fancy at all, Arexie a bit better on quality alone. We can easily see the pirate base in this list, since there are no other facilities. If your colonies are swarmed with pirate ships, visit this screen to spot bases being built. They are much easier to get rid up while incomplete (like in the south), compared to finished and strong (like in the north).



Keep in mind, these settings are not for a releaxed economy. Feudalism is not the best, and hard difficulty does not help either.
We live by a huge spaceport income, and our freighters go to the souther colony to die so that the civilians will have to buy new ships.

The current funds of 42k could buy us 15 frigates, but there is no big stationary target apart from the known pirate base, and we can hardly carry the 10k extra maintenance cost. Allowing funds to build some more for a paniced action would not be the worst thing in the world, but will our current funds be eaten by mostly maintenance?



We used to have 2 troop transports, now we got one. Where did the missing one go? My guess is that it picked the wrong fight against someone visiting the capital system. It is hard to notice all combat messages when there is a stream of messages of attacks on civilian ships. I was considering retiring it to save maintenance, and now the choice has been made for me.

< Message edited by Bingeling -- 5/29/2014 8:07:38 AM >

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 8
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/28/2014 9:08:58 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		At a time like that, with poor economy, slow breeding, lots of pirates, a giant looming pirate capital ship that has almost the firepower of my whole military (including LSP) alone, you wonder - How will this be possible?

The positive spin is that only 1,5 pirate crews are currently interfering. We do grow, 700M more on the capital from 2112 to something like 2116. I forgot to type the end date, but will start the next piece with a timestamp.

The economy will grow, and hopefully I will be able to do some proper pirate spanking. Or this will be one sad AAR

About the AI. I want some more troops. And I am sure that 6% tax on that 4K revenue do wonders for my economy...

< Message edited by Bingeling -- 5/28/2014 10:09:37 PM >

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 9
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/29/2014 12:37:57 AM   
FireLion1983

 

Posts: 149
Joined: 4/18/2014
Status: offline 		Nice one, I like AARs with some challenge! Keep it up!

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 10
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/29/2014 3:21:01 AM   
Grotius


Posts: 5798
Joined: 10/18/2002
From: The Imperial Palace.
Status: offline 		I'm learning a lot from this AAR. Please keep it coming! And yes, I find it more interesting when the player is struggling, which is what I'm usually doing. :)

_____________________________


(in reply to FireLion1983)
Post #: 11
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/29/2014 10:05:30 AM   
Icemania


Posts: 1847
Joined: 6/5/2013
From: Australia
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Werewolf1326
I'm new to DW. Read two AAR's so far and surprisingly in both the players have essentially told the Pirates to PACK SAND! Which goes against everything else I've read when it comes to just starting out a new system and the almost universal advice to pay off the pirates.

Considering that the pirates have pretty much handed me my ass without even breaking a sweat in the starts I've made I believed the advice.

There are many different ways to play Distant Worlds. That said in the very early game (when Pirates are significantly stronger technologically) you have to weigh up the costs of building up sufficient defences (which can represent a massive fraction of your income) against the costs of short-term agreements. Allowing them to destroy your structures is the worst option economically.





(in reply to Werewolf13)
Post #: 12
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/29/2014 12:19:54 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		One reason why I battle the pirates, is because it is fun. And it is fun to remember the early struggle when/if you beat them and much later think back of when pirates were more than a nuisance.

I believe there is a rather huge difference between me and some other players. I don't play a lot of games, but when I do I love doing them. The hard part is starting, and writing an AAR helps... I like to keep some things automated to avoid being too efficient. Some player like to do stuff like build mines with long range scanners to have the privates pay maintenance. I prefer to play more of a simulation and role playing game. If I need a monitoring station, I build and pay for one. If I need a powerful gas mine to resupply fleet, I design a star base and pay for it with state funds. I also prefer the game to be a galaxy simulator with no scripted adds like the Return of the Shakturi story.

There are no right or wrong ways to play this game, but there are many ways. I find it silly to exploit the AI in all matters and then complain about poor AI, though (former, excessive tech trading comes to mind).

(in reply to Icemania)
Post #: 13
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/29/2014 12:55:17 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Onwards! To, eh, something!

It is 2116.11.06

A glance at Dhayu 3, our southern colony shows that the main pirate presence is a 7 ship fleet of the Lone Dagger Ravagers. An escort from the Grim Guild is also present, and they are allied (shown by diploamcy screen), and refuse to kill each other. Too bad.

This pokes me to clear up a piece of confusion from my part. The screenshot of the scary capital shows that it is a Lone Dagger Ravagers ship, not grim claw, like written before.

The grim claw were present at the northern colony. This could hint at the grim claws are based more to the east, and the Lone Dagger Ravagers more to the south, since we have yet to spot a lone dagger at our northern colony. But they are hard to spot, as the two empires have similar colour.

A look at the fleet shows damage (1, 2, 2 components) on 3 ships. Someone is packing rail guns or gravitic weapons.

Viewing one of the damaged ships in the ship list reveals that one of them has a thruster and life support damaged.



That means gravitic weapons, lets hope they won't kill too many hyperdrives and make ships stuck... Rail guns would bypass shields and damage armor, while gravitic weapons bypass both.

Currently our mines are in the capital system, and two western systems. We got 3 colony systems. And 8 frigates. At this time a one-on-one fight is not really in our interest, and two 4 ship fleets would be calling it close when a typical crew of two pirate frigates and a pirate escort arrives.

For now, the short term plan is to retrofit and repair the fleet, maybe head back to the northern colony to kill pirate raiders, and watch whether our money is randomly sitting at 42K or if we have a nice little 50k bonus income trend going on.

With ctrl right clicks, the fleet is told to retrofit, then queued to repair, then queued to move to the Montu Kudro system to have them visist the star rather than move directly to the colony. Just in case there is a pirate capital ship sitting atop of the colony when they arrive.

I like to automate transports to "fill themselves". I don't automate my current one, since my spare troops are in the south, and that colony has 8 pirate ships overhead. I guess that is where the other went :) It is heading for the capital spaceport, and we remember to tell it to retrofit. Another reason to keep the troops in the south is that they help stop pirate raiders.

Energy research is 18% Advanced Nuclear Fission. After that we lack enhanced maneuvering to get out of that poor first tier of ship components. Colonization is still at only 11% after a setback or two. Armored Ground Assault is at 70%, and we got the first line of relevant weapon tech, including star fighters. The research potential is at 495K, slowly climbing alongside the population (and hopefully the economy).

Known targets are the pirate base, and a mine of theirs a bit SW of the capital. It is not a priority kill for our few ships right now.

Freighters still go to the southern colony to die. The explorers built finally launch from the capital (after sitting idle wondering why they got no orders).



2116.12.08. We don't know or check if the civilians are expanding, replacing or retrofitting, but they are make sure that the spaceport is not currently bored.

There is a message of attack on a mining ship in the system NW of the capital. Early on we saw a pirate resupply ship there. Now it is deployed, and joined by a couple of escorts and two mines.

At the same time we notice the pirates hovering around Dhayu 3 killing a ship of the Sinister Outlaws (dark green colored pirate gang). We spot a resupply ship of the sinister outlaws in the system just north of Dhayu where a constructor is setting up a mine. That mine is not likely to live long...

2116.12.24 A destroyer of the Najarca Council (guys with known base) tries to raid Dhayu 3. The lone dagger ravagers that camps at the site kills it using gravitic weapons and tractor beams.

2117.01.28 as the fleet is at the start of their retrofit at the capital, we notice a lone dagger ship at our northern colony. That gang crawl over both our colonies, they got a nasty capital ship, but are nice enough to kill some other pirates. And they use annoying gravitic weapons. I hope we will be allowed to wipe their main base in due time...

2117.02.18. Money is at 48K after taking a dip, cashflow at -5600. The spaceport is working on the 1st fleet.



2117.03.03 Our leader is not exactly one of the strengths of our empire. We could dismiss him, but we automate stuff, remember? Lets hope for a foreign assassination plot or something...



2117.05.07 Dhayu 3 is under attack by a pirate capital ship of the "nearby guys" the Najarca Council. At least this one is not as powerful as the other one. Some Grim Guild pirates are at the colony already. A najarcan frigate joins in too, and a lone dagger escort is also present. The outcome?

The capital kills the other pirate ships, and they drop a raiding party.



Since we have the troops we don't bother to try to retrieve here, we have a decent defense, but they get away with 270 dantha fur, 12 steel, and 9 helium. Whatever, we can live with that...

The two pirate capital groups don't like each other. How about having a capital ship meeting?

2117.05.15. Cash is at 52K, so pretty stable. Cashflow at -5786. We consider some ship building.
The AI wants to spend some money on military and to build 2 construction ships.

We peek at the destroyer design, see that it is a bit slower, a bit cheaper to maintain, and a bit more powerful than the frigate. We buy 5 destroyers to form the 2nd fleet. The plan? To run around killing pirate mines. Maybe we find some treasure and they become self funded? Maybe they find a pirate capital ship and end up dead? There are all kinds of possibilities. We add them as the 3rd fleet by way of ship list and firepower sorting.

The AI suggests to attack the pirate facility at the northern colony. Considering that it wiped our 4 troops last time, and we currently got two, we reject the idea. Current troops are: 1 at the capital, 2 at arexie, and 5 at Dhayu. Not exactly a mighty dhayut war machine, and not exactly stellar capital defenses. But there is a spaceport on top, and no nearby empire that we know off. And they should be busy with their own pirates.

We have explored from our area to the map edge on our left. We have found no pirate bases, and more importantly, no empires. A good thing. We have not explored much to the right of our empire.

2117.06.02 The 1st fleet is back up north, and ready to do something about the single small pirate ship present.

2117.10.10. The 3rd fleet of 5 destroyers is complete, but like all new builds they start with uncharged shields, and we give them some time to charge up. It also does not hurt to have some ships in the capital system that can pretend they are there to defend it.

We reject various AI suggestions like trade sanctions. If we knew where they are some trade income would be more than welcome, as we are not picky at this time. Or rather, I ignore them, you don't _have_ to click anything, including stupid pirate and empire offers.

A message appears about a damaged freighter in the southern system. If the pirate did not finish its job, we would have scrapped it to remove any possibility of the AI constructors deciding to repair it. They better spam mines at this time, and that system is not a good spot to visit with a construction ship.

As a pirate escort of the green guys drops a tiny raiding party at Dhayu 3 (before getting killed by the lone dagger frigate present), we spot a 0% complete hidden pirate base of the lone daggers at the colony. Once the raid has been repelled we attack the pirate base, which is trivial to kill at 0% completed.

2117.12.14 3rd fleet shields at 100/300... Waiting...

2117.12.27 We are impatient, and the shields will also recharge while travelling, and we can micro manage a bit.

Targets?

Selecting a system will show information about mines previously seen there.



For the above system we also remember that there is a pirate resupply ship present, and that we had our mining ship chased by some smaller pirate ship there. The mines are owned by the grim guild.

This method is used to hunt mines, and later in the games I can jump into systems by suspicion during war (near the capital? 10 planets?).

I select the first mined planet from above image, zoom in on it, select the fleet (previous is a nice tool for this), and make it move to it. I will be more careful about blindly moving to gas mines, as there could be pirate ships present to refuel.

The Libiya system requires a bit micro management, as a "forgotten" ship may decide to attack the resupply ship we think are there. And that is probably a losing battle by some margin.

2118.01.01 Bombard weapons are next for the AI researcher after completing armored ground assault. This is where some human touch could help, since we are hardly stuffed with bombard targets at this time. Nor ships to bombard with.

Also? No pirates in the dhayu system? They are getting sloppy. That lasted a whole 10 days or so, and we don't bother report raids on our small colonies unless they get away with a lot. Hopefully they train our ground forces while attacking...

2118.02.27 As third fleet lands at their planet destination, they find the expected mines in the system. They also find the resupply ship and an explorer of a different pirate crew. We tell them to attack the mining station, queue them to attack the other mining station in the system, and queue them to move to the Xirius system a bit to the SW where we can see info about a mine of the Najarca Council. This way they won't "hang around" in the Libiya system to engage pirate ships including the dangerous resupply one.

One stupid feature happens. Killing the first mine, we get information of a lost ship "The Extractor of Montu Kudro". At the same time a message pops about spotting an abandoned ship in the Montu Kudro system. This is our northern colony system, remember. We investigate and take control of the destoryer. Earlier in the game we also got info about a lost ship in this system by some means. Obviously there is some space anomaly there that drops alien ships now an then. Handy, it is right outside our colony:



I prefer to retire any alien ship not much stronger than our own for the technology boost.

We slap ourselves for having viewed the wrong number looking at firepower of ships. They are weaker than mentioned. Our destroyer has 46 firepower and 300 shields. The alien destroyer has 212 firepower and 390 shields. It is a much superior ship. Keep in mind that the second pirate capital had firepower in the 300s.

We add the alien destroyer to the 1st fleet that sit at the nearby colony (and also was the one investigating it).

As the second pirate mine in the Libiya system dies to the 3rd fleet, we gain 5231 credits. That is half of the current yearly negative cashflow...

2118.03.12 We have found two small spaceports of the Grim Guild in a system 1 sector to our north. We have just killed two of their mines, and the diplomacy screen tell that they have 44 ships. This can't be their "home base".

The locally based Najarca Council has only 4 ships, and an explorer drops by to spot their resupply ship and a bunch of mines. We take note that we could raid their home system like we did the Libiya system just now.



2118.04.19. The third fleet has just arrived ath the xirius system. We tell them to attack the mine, queue them to attack the mine seen to the south of their system (a light blueish base). That is a gas mine of the most local pirates. We then queue them to refuel at the nearest spaceport. That brings them home, where hopefully the 62% research quantum reactor could be ready for them as they arrive.

We can see the small spaceports of the Grim Guild at the top.

There is a flashing circle about some object in a system right outside their fuel range to the right. We don't bother to do anything about it, but could force an explorer (or a frigate) to investigate it.

We lack an explorer heading to the lower left, and those areas are not explored. We notice that we are down to 8 explorers, and order 4 more. Cash is at 38k, cashflow as -11k, but we got a fleet hunting pirate money. Also, bonus income has been low for a while, and we can hope for some cash as privates retrofit to quantum reactors in a while.

2118.05.15. This is silly, I am not a fan of alien ships, but I am a huge fan of Distant Worlds. As we kill the pirate mine in the Xirius system, we get info about another ship in the Montu Kudro system.



We see that the fleet has drifted off. We tell the fleet to move to the colony, and then tell a common fleet member to go to the cruiser. It is not a shabby one at all...

2118.06.08 As an explorer dies in the pirate system to the right, we discover a newly found mortalen colony in the system to the right of that. They got colonization, we got colonization research at 20% (research penalty from feudalism, setbacks, no high tech reseach pre warp...)

We have to intercept the 3rd fleet heading north since we told the wrong fleet to move to that colony as we found the second alien ship...



We also find a Dhayut independent a bit further east as seen in the image.

Looking at it there is little tempting at least without knowing its resources. Quality at 65% means it will never make significant money. The system has only 2 planets and 2 moons, and the only nearby system is to the SE, a bit farther than the mortalen colony is. We could invade it, even if in mortalen territory, but we struggle enough with the two colonies we have grabbed already and it is "crap".

We can also see the 3rd fleet after being intercepted going north. We tell them to refuel before going back to their mine busting mission in the south, as out of fuel ships are annoying and embarassing. There is a gas mine not farm from them down left, and it is not a huge detour.

2118.07.04 We investigate and grab the pirate cruiser shown above. We add it to the first fleet. With the two alien ships we got options.

To put it in perspective. Our military strenght is 1571. The spaceport gives 500, leaving 1071. And the alien ships found give 304 and 222. 1/3 is the spaceport, 1/3 is alien found ships, 1/3 is our 8 frigates and 5 destroyers. And maybe our 3 research bases is part of that too...

The alien ships of course add some maintenance.

We spot the cruiser (from being automated when found) heading south to load troops. I do NOT want troops loaded in a fighting ship, and stop it. It should find back to its fleet leader by default behavior.

With options, this is a good time for a status and a break.

It is 2118.08.29, and we have inflicted minor pain on a couple of pirate crews. And found alien toys!

Status

This update covers less than two years. We are weak, but it is still only 6 years and a few months since we researched the gerax hyperdrive.

Keep in mind, there is a _lot_ of attack spam that I do not mention. The civilians are still visiting the south, the north was without a fleet for a while, mining ships stumble across pirates, explorers find all kinds of stuff...

And with two decent alien ships we have options.

We can do nothing, and stay with a quite powerful fleet at our northern colony.
We can split it in two, and try to defend both small colony systems.
We can manually spam some troops to clear the upper pirate facility (at least 10).
We could also put a fleet at the capital system, but we have not seen a pirate visit since we retired the escorts.

And we can use the alien ships for pirate hunting. It is at least possible to waste any small spaceports up north, and it could be possible to kill the large known pirate spaceport. But that last option could lead to a loss of alien ships.

The aliens ought to be able to down (or chase away) the weaker of the two pirate capitals met. And I rather not have them enter the "no hyperjump" zone around the larger pirate capital while they are as valuable as they are now. I am a bit protective about toys I can't build myself.




The map covers all the known entities of the galaxy. We can see the 3rd fleet refueling, a construction ship building a mine out left, and a few mine locations outside our colonies. The mine built om tje system with a deployed pirate resupply ship just NE of the southern colony has actually survived so far, and there has been no attack spam from that system that I have noticed.



We can see the Securan appearing strong, probably because they have high population growth. They have only 1 colony, the Mortalen has 3.

The lone dagger ravagers and grim guild are our most annoying pirate clans. We can see they are among the stronger ones. The Najarca council look stronger, maybe because they found that pirate capital ship.



The few colonies we got. There is still that pirate facility, which could actually make us lose the colony if expanded. But then we could take the colony back with an invasion, so the different is not that huge compared to finding the troops to destroy it now.



At the end of the last post, 2 years ago, colony tax revenue was 26K. Now it is 27K. We have a colony governor at the capital giving +16% colony income and +10% colony happiness.

The economy is OK like it is now, but I do not want to spend a lot of money on military ships. We don't build any cash reserve with our current maintenance.




< Message edited by Bingeling -- 5/29/2014 2:33:13 PM >

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 14
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/30/2014 10:25:46 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Further on the way to become a decent empire...

2118.08.29, we are still rather new into space.

We decide to not do anything too drastical at this stage. The local pirates have not bothered us much, and we bother them with mine attacks.

The 3rd fleet is refueling, with attack order on a gas mine of theirs SW of the capital.

By checking the local system infos, we are aware of a mine of the same crew in the right part of our capital circle.
4 frigates of the first fleet are split into a new (2nd) fleet to bust that mine. The 4 other frigates and the two alien ships remain at the northern colony.

2118.10.16 A construction ship of the local gang shows up in the system where the 3rd fleet just refueled.

After killing the mine (with no treasure) the 4 ship 2nd fleet is told to attack the construction ship, but it is far away, the fleet is weak, and we have little hope of killing it. But we do not want a pirate mine in the system of our fuel mine, so even killing the mine build and chasing the constructor is quite good.

2118.11.16 As the 3rd fleet arrive at the south-ish gas mine target, they notice that this is not a fuel source, but it has 4 other gases. They find 6432 credits among the wreckage.

They have a queued order to refuel at the spaceport, but we rather tell them as well to attack the pirate constructor that is to their north.

There is a small chance the two fleets arrive at approximately the same time.

Did I mention that pirate construction ships are high priority targets? They can not build new ones without a colony, so they have to capture any replacement. And just as construction ships are tricky to kill, they are also tricky to capture.

The 2nd fleet with almost no fuel are first at the scene. The construction ship easily escape. The 3rd fleet home in at it and meets it in deep space. Again the construction ship easily evade. Many ships, good firepower, or hyperdeny would be required for a kill.

The 2nd fleet is low on fuel, and are happy to have ended up in a system with a fuel source. The 3rd fleet is told to kill the newly built mine.

And just moments later gas mining ships in the Xirus 3 system discover the constructor as it approaches to build a mine at their mining target.

This is the same system and possibly same planet where we just recently destroyed a mine.

4048 credits gained killing the newly built mine. 2nd fleet is refueling in the system, 3rd fleet do the same. They eye another shot at the construction ship in the system just north.

Not that we are optimistic at another shot, even with 9 ships.

We find two mortalen independents in a system east of our southern colony. They are quite nice colonies at 83 and 87% quality, but we lack troops for an invasion currently. Also, we will have trouble clearing their pirate structures, not to mention trouble with keeping the skies clear of pirates. It is more trouble than it is worth at the current time.

We capture a pirate escort that tried to cause trouble at our nothern colony. It is badly wrecked and with no hyperdrive, but we use the quick button to queue a constructor to fix it. Plan? To send it back home to retire for tech... Or? Phew? the hyperdrive woke up, it was apparently only disabled. An escort with 28 damaged components, still hyperspacing at 8000 speed? That must be precision shooting from our boys.

2119.06.27. We have completed research for the quantum reactors. Sadly the research guys move on to improvements rather than something more pressing like construction size.

2119.07.18. No chance when it comes to killing the constructor, it is cratch with maybe 20% shields damaged. The 3rd fleet is told to retrofit. The 2nd fleet is told to kill the mine that appeared, then will retrofit.

We split the 1st fleet frigates into a separate fleet and tell it to retrofit. This way the alien ships can protect the northern colony, which they easily manage alone (they are powerful), while the frigates can retrofit.

2394 credits for killing the new mine in the Xirius system.

2119.08.02 An exploration ship visits the pirate system of our local crew. We spot a frigate and their capital near a gas mine in the system. We see that the large spaceport has 7080 shield and 612 firepower. We are in no hurry to fight that one, in particular while the capital ship is at home.

As our construction ships are spotted heading for the capital, they are told to retrofit. The first one has construction sabotaged, and we have to micro manage movement to the capital for retrofit since the spaceport cover the colony (no right click option). And we do NOT want it to retrofit at the smaller, northern colony which is closest (and default).

We order all explorers to retrofit, it will help to get a more efficient reactor on them.

We spot Grim Guild mines to the north, a nice target for the next destroyer mining trip... And another Grim guild small spaceport to the NE, they must be fond of building small spaceports.

We spot a good quality Atuuk independent to the NW. It is quite far, and has two pirate structures, and may soon be controlled by the grim guild.

2119.10.08 An exploration ship spots two capital ships of the lone dagger ravagers in the Mortalu system. We do not take note, but it is probably our old friend and one more. We are not the only ones finding alien ships.

2119.10.25 The mysteries of the universe: "The recent space battle near Sollost 2 caused our ship captain...". Battle? Near our capital? What? Maybe a revealed pirate freighter, or maybe exploration ship?

We notice that the incoming destroyers have refuel not retrofit order. It seems the designers gave up on making a new design because the fission reactor is a bit larger than the old space reactor. The 3rd fleet is sent up north to visit a pirate gas mine instead.

A newly discovered light blue pirate mine just to the east has the 5th fleet (former 1st fleet frigates) incoming.

Mine busting is not eventful, and it may be a lot of it for a while. No great details until something interesting happens.

2120.02.10. We got a ship boarding bonus from the escort we captured and that somehow managed to limp home. A retrofit suggestion reveal that we got the assault pod from it.

3rd and 5th fleets kill their mines with no bonuses. The 5th heads off to refuel at our northern colony, the 3rd heads a bit west to another system where we expect to find two mines of the Grim Guild.

We read up on the rules to verify that the hidden pirate base on our colony is no big threat. They need a crimnal network built to take control, and we saw that build on an independent.

2120.04.17 A mining ship spot a Grim Guild construction ship in the system where the 5th just killed a mine. The 5th is almost back at the northern colony to refuel. The 1st fleet with the two alien ships is told to attack the constructor. Maybe they can make it will work?

We are much more eager to hurt the Grim Guild than the local fools.

2120.05.26:



No warp inhibition, the cruiser is launching torpedoes. The construction ship tries to get away.
A bit below half shields, it gets away. Slippery bastards.

The 1st move to the Libiya system, where we think there is a Grim Guild resupply ship.

The 5th manage to kill a pirate escort at the northern colony in the absense of the big guys.

The 3rd fleet on the northern pirate trip kills two more mines with no reward and gets refuel order. The mine is just outside their range, so the first out of fuel trip is ahead of this empire.

2120.07.24. Money is up to 42K, and we order a 3rd construction ship.



2120.09.07. Our alien boys find the 141 firepower resupply ship. They take minor shield damage, the resupply ship goes down quickly.

The alien 1st fleet is then told to attack the pirate resupply ship in the system just outside the southern colony where we got a mine. We can see that this ship has less firepower (in the 80s).

We had a raid on a mine in the capital system, the 2nd fleet of 4 frigates was at home and killed the ship.

2121.01.06. We notice the 1st fleet and no resupply ship in the Adiga system outside Dhayu. Our guys sit at a gas giant hinting on what happened. They refuel at the gas mine in the system. We tell the destroyer to leave the 1st fleet and join the 5th that defends the northern colony. The lone cruiser will try defend the dhayu system and our frequently raided southern colony. Lets hope the big pirate capitals stay in the Mortalu system...

The 3rd fleet (destroyers) is busy going around our nearby systems to kill fresh mines built by various pirates.

2121.05.19. The first fleet spanks the first prospective raider at Dhayu, and we find that we have just 9 explorers left. We order 6 more. We seem to gain some money now, due to some bonus income.

3983 credits is found among the wrecks after a 3rd fleet mining trip. Thinking of mines, we manually book some constructors to eventually put gas mines at a couple of fuel sources in the area.

My sloppy way of building fuel mines: Click the systems in the area for the quick system overview. Recognize if the system har caslon/hydrogen by symbols. Zoom in and click the gas giants until finding the correct one, queue gas mine by quick button at selection panel.

2121.08.15.



A future tech cruiser bashing pirate escorts is not a fair fight. After killing off some of another clan, it is here feeding on a couple of Grim Guild ships. The third is already dead. It is hard to stop all when 5-6 arrive at once, though.

The last ship of the image above was captured, and heads off to retirement.

How many pirates can attack Dhayu 3 in a short span of time? A lot. How many can our cruiser kill in the same timeframe? Almost, but not quite, as many.

We find a large (main?) spaceport of the Grim Guild 1 sector north of our northern colony. We find a small spaceport of the Ikuriun Ravagers

(dark green guys) about 1 sector south of our southern colony. The dark greens are probably the owners of the southern resupply ship we believe we destroyed.

2122.02.18. Research? We got bombard weapons, just started light interceptors. The Fission upgrade is at 86% in energy. Colonization? At 42%, probably ready for a new critical failure and setback to 3%...

Brilliance!



An explorer releases a kaltor swarm when investigating a ruin. The good part? Working at the site was a construction ship of the lone dagger

ravagers. We can see the construction ship take a bit of damage, but sadly it escapes. It is a system with a lot of pirate mines 1 sector south of our area.

2122.04.16 We hesitate to go 1 sector away to bust pirate mines, and we are not quite there to bust spaceport. Apart from Dhayu 3 and explorer ships, it has been quite silent lately.

2122.04.21 Thinking "it is quite silent now" is a sure way of summoning some action. 5 days later the massive pirate capital attacks a mine in our home system. We are not sure of its further plans but head back home just in case..



- The fleet at our capital moves to a nearby system. 4 frigates do not want to mess with it.
- All the other fleets move to the capital.



Then the capital ship of the local guys appear and also attack the mine. It is weaker than the other by firepower, and we notice that these pirate crews are on unfriendly termps. (We clicked them in diplomacy). They shoot at each other.

They both jump, the biggest one takes more damage. All our fleets are told to attack the big one which is shields down and stops not too far from the capital colony itself. They are some way out, though.

Fleets in hyperspace tracks targets as they move. The big capital jumps to the right, and it may seem like it heads for the pirate system of the other part in their pirate battle. Our fleets follow.

It is clear it has a trajectory just south of the other pirate system. We have spotted a large spaceport of them further to the east, but it is probably heading quite a bit south of that.

We are amazed that the ship with less firepower did more damage. Maybe the big one lacks som defensive toys?

Pirates feed on our smaller colonies while the fleets are away, and fleet heads back to their bases. 3435 credits is stolen from Araxiel in the north. But a shot at killing a pirate capital or two was worth the try.

2122.09.24 Our fighting parties from the home system have a similar, but smaller, disagreement outside Dhayu 3. Unlike at the capital, the returning cruiser kills both of these.

The Research guys have turned the energy attention to hyperdeny systems. We support the idea, but how about making us able to build a ship remotely close to being able to use it, first?

2123.01.25 Disappointed at the general safety of the home systems (apart from when the military hunts pirate capital ships), our freighters now move to the Atuuk independent to the NW to die. The Mortalu system with two independents east of our southern colony also works out for them.

Our cash heap is climbing slowly, but we use about as much as we gain on new explorers, etc. The cashflow was at -11k, now it is -5k or even a bit better.

2123.03.22 The local guys attack a mine just outside Dhayu with their capital ship and 5 more ships. With hyperdeny it is a danger to our cruiser operating alone. We do not want to lose the alien ships until we can build some powerful fleets on our own.

The cruiser moves to the northern system to join the alien destroyer and four frigates.

We order 2 frigates and 2 destroyers to form a new fleet that will be placed to protect dhayu 3. They should have a fighting chance with the pirate frigates and escorts, and we can live with them being killed.

2123.03.27 As we worry about pirate capitals, destroying another fresh mine reveal the coordinates of the anomaly in the Monu Kudro system. And it is a pretty thing.



The fleet is at the gas mine in the system and is told to attend to the colony, apart from one frigate told to go to the capital.

2123.04.10 The Haakonish Industries get in touch after having bought our contact info from pirates. A single colony, they naturally like us, but we know them to be a grumpy bunch in general.

2123.04.18 As the frigate claims the capital ship, we discover a kaltor between them. Where did that come from? Through the anomaly? It is quickly killed by the capital ship. The capital ship joins the local 5th fleet that has all our big toys.

With the cruiser coming up from the south, without having gotten far at all, the 5th fleet gets order to refuel at the capital. The 3rd fleet is soon at the northern colony after killing the base that summoned the capital ship. We got a new toy, and we plan to use them all.

3199 maintenance for the new capital ship, let it earn its living.

The local raiders appear to head home after raiding and capturing our mine in the south. How long will they have a home to return to? How long will we have powerful alien ships? We rename the 5th fleet to "Battle 1".

On the move

2123.07.28 Battle 1, dragged down with 4 frigates best used as cannon fodder, is refueled at the capital. They are told to move to the gas giant in the pirate system that has fuel, and is quite far away from their base.

The new fleet planned to protect Dhayu, has as its first mission to kill the base just captured by the same pirates.



The beauty of fleets on the move. Battle 1 is heading for the pirate system. The new 6th fleet a bit spread out is heading for the light blue mine, and eyeing pirates in the Dhayu system.

As the leading alien ships of battle 1 approach the system, they see the pirate fleet heading the other way by some alien scanner stuff. They turn around and moves to the capital, as we assume they are inbound for some mine at home. Continue or turn? It was not an obvious choice.

The battle 1 media officer is fired after failing to deliver an image of this.



As the 6th fleet arrive to take up position at Dhayu 3, pirates fight pirates, and the 6th fleet joins the fray. They take a beating, but so do the pirates. 1 dead, 1 crippled, 2 heading home for repair. They were not exactly of alien quality, and the two survivors head back to the capital.

The pirate capital shows itself at the fuel mine in the home system. The local fleet is told to leave, and battle 1 to attack.



Our first proper battle?



Our cruiser and a few frigates die. The alien destroyer flees. Our capital ship has a huge hyperdenial field, and pummels the pirate capital.

Tractor beams keeps it in place.

The pirate capital dies, our capital ends up at 427/1040 shields.

The other pirate ships jumps at another mine in the system, the two surviving escapees of ours are told to repair, the capital ship attacks. A couple seems to get away, but most die. The mine is captured and quickly killed by the ships returning from the south.

Losing the cruiser was unfortunate, but our new capital ship is much stronger. The alien destroyer does not really stand up well against huge numbers of larger ships, and may not be as valuable as it could be.

The survivors of the 6th fleet join the 2nd fleet that has been sitting at the capital system. They move south, now with 6 ships. We need to protect Dhayu 3. The remaining frigate in battle 1 also joins, but needs major repairs first.

2124.06.06 We try to visit the same gas giant in the pirate system once more. The capital my carefully test the spaceport. Battle 1 is now only the alien capital and destroyer.

2124.07.16 A setback to 27% in colonization. Will we ever finish it?

2124.09.02 Battle 1 starts working on the mines of the pirate system. Killing the first one triggers another ship at our favorite anomaly.



The latest present from the anomaly exploded, it was a trap :(.

2125.02.27. We meet an exploration ship from the Naxxilian Authority in a system a sector or so south of ours. They tell us that they only got 1 colony.

2125.03.05. The Mortalen complain about our military forces in the pirate system. It is in their territory. We ignore them.

We fail in our micro management, and the alien destroyer dies at the pirate spaceport. The capital kill the final mine, tests the spaceport, and finds it safer to head south to refuel near dhayut. We killed all the mines in the pirate system, and quite a lot of pirate ships too.

2125.05.28. The mortalen has colonized a rather poor colony prospect, SW of our southern colony.

2125.05.12. We learn of the Ugnari Industries, reported to have 4 colonies.

2125.08.14. The capital ship starts protecting dhayu 3, the 2nd fleet head for the capital system. And we reseach hyperjump inhibiting. Moving on to improved engines.

We spot another new mortalen colony to the south, in the system with a small pirate spaceport. Good luck with that!

The 3rd fleet protects the northern colony, we send a single destroyer to bust a new mine of our nearby pirate friends. The friends on the other hand, attack a mine at the asteroid field in the home system.

A rather large pirate fleet, attack a mine of ours far south. Mines die to these attacks.

Another large pirate fleet attacks mine in the far north. Two mines, both will go. Far in this context being a sector or a bit more from our territory.

As the destroyer on a mine busting trip finishes it job, it is time for a status.

It is 2126.03.23, and the pirates are annoying.

Status

Hopefully this is near the low point of the pirate battle, because they are becoming annoying. Keep in mind that I boosted the pirates in numbers, proximity, and gave them advantages with expensive research and many independents. I am starting to regret that now ;-)

My experience in automated games does not hint at the dhayut being strong starters, either.

What is needed is the economy to carry some larger destroyer fleets or something to do offensive punches. 20-30-40 destroyers of a bit better quality than we currently got, with the cash to replace losses. Our current funds at 36k is enough to purchase 14 destroyers, but we can not afford to maintain them (almost 10k extra maintenance).

I prefer to let the AI decide in the areas where I choose to automate things. To manually improve the situation I could among other things do:

- Scrap the research stations, add labs to the spaceport. I have a non-stellar scientist (23% energy, 5% weapons, 11% high-tech) at the energy lab, but he could help the other areas a little bit. It also saves some cash.
- Switch government to lose the -25% research speed. Military dictatorship? -20% approval as only drawback? Republic? +25% research, but extra maintenance and war weariness? I can not imagine a Dhayut republic, though.
- Sack the leader? 11% colony income and 10% population growth is not terrible, though, but he has a load of negatives.
- Do manual research. Short term needs are: Improved torpedoes and matrox blasters in weapons. Bombard, more star fighters, armored ground assault could wait, since that is for a bit later in the game. Construction size in energy tab, no need to have hyperdeny without planning to use it on ships, and for that we need larger shipyards. And getting all weapons on the destroyer design would help quite a bit.

How about the pirates? The local group was silent for a while, they have shown up with destroyers lately, and are not so silent anymore. They are weaker than the other pirates bothering us, though. And they are nice in building mines near our colonies that we can kill for treasures.

And will we ever complete the colonization tech? We have researched it for most of the game, even if very slowly in pre-warp.



This is approximately the known area of space. Our military sit at the colonies apart from a single destroyer that has just killed a mine west of the capital.

We have the bases of the Grim Guild to our north. They just killed two mines in that area.
We have our light blueish local guys.
To the right are the bases of the cruel claw pillagers, the ones owning the big pirate capital and that have/had at least one more.
The green pirates to the south that owns the small spaceport creating the flag in a mortalen system, have been bothering us in the Dhayu system alongside all of the above.
The pink-ish flag of the sinister spaceways is seen in the lower left, we have not noticed their ships around

It is not very visible, but to the left of the Grim Guild bases in the north, is the former atuuk independent which is now the capital colony of the grim guild. Right at the "Y" in Yaselur Region.



No more pirate shots, there is a lot of pirate crews around. There is one pirate crew who's status bar dwarfs that of the other pirates. They are called the Talfagleu Army. Notice the name of the Securan empire? Free Talfagleu Utopia. We are not the only empire with some pirate issues, and the diplomacy screen reveal that the Talf pirates is Furious with the Securans, they have had their battles.

Empire comparison screen shows that.
- The securan and haakonish have the highest population. Darn breeders.
- The Mortalen has 6 colonies, the securan and haakonish only one.
- The Haakonish has the best economy with a clear margin ahead of the Securans. We lead the rest of the pack.
- The Haakonish has highest military strength, the Mortalen the lowest by some margin. The rest are quite even.

So even if the Mortalen right now dislike us due to wanting our stuff, they lack the military to throw a punch. Good thing with 1 troop at the capital. Their 5 extra colonies should make sure they struggle a lot with pirates.



The capital is slowly growing, and slowly building more taxable revenue.



The economy is slowly improving.



There are not many obvious savings. Remove research stations and add labs to the spaceport? Save 3k. Retire the troop transport? Save 1k. That is 4k saved, and the 7 frigates have 5k maintenance. And 7 frigates extra would not help much, apart from giving another mine busting fleet or something.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 15
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/31/2014 12:46:29 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Sitting duck?

2126.03.23. 8-10 ship pirate fleets have killed mines to the north and south. When will they visit our colonies with such force? Will they come with a larger fleet to raid the capital?

For now time must pass to give some economic freedom so that we can punch back.

Assume that the 3rd fleet sits in the north killing single escorts arriving, and that the capital ship sits in the south killing a lot of escorts and a bit larger stuff. Single ships move around the close area when pirate mines are spotted (not that it will happen a lot).

The main fault of our capital ship is the lack of repair bots. It has 1 armor damaged from some rail gun, and wants to flee if hit by something more than an escort. The local crew is guilty of arriving with 4 destroyers and such, which while strong ships can be handled by our capital ship.

A refugee ship (colony ship) of the Lone Dagger Ravagers appear at Dhayu 3. It is killed off.

2126.11.06 As a construction ship finishes replacing a lost gas mine just outside Dhayu, it is intercepted and ordered to repair the capital ship. Will it work? Getting rid of the 1 damage would help.

Another option is to build a spaceport to get repair facilities, but it is both expensive and hard to protect while being built.

2126.12.20 We learn that the war between the Naxxilian Authority and the Tefnyl Hive has ended. We have not heard of those other guys, but a hive government should be possible friends.

The repair job with the construction ship is interrupted when pirates arrive. The capital ship flees from trivial combat. We try a new meeting in dead space outside the system. If this does not work, we give up.

One annoying feature is at work. It has 1 armor damaged out of 60, and flee from combat on full shields.

Retiring a former pirate gives the target tracking component. We start retrofitting, but military ships are not retrofitted all at once.

2127.03.28 Repaired, the capital ship moves back to Dhayu 3 to fend off pirates.

The newly built gas mine near Dhayu is again attacked. We decide to leave the site for now, having 6 other caslon sources. The AI constructors have their own mind, though.

2127.06.30 A large lone dagger fleet lead by the giant capital ship busts a mine in the capital system. The local fleet otherwise able to do some base protection is sent away to avoid feeding the monster.

2127.07.27 We spot the light blue construction ship Jintawoe Relic which we have tried killed before west of the capital. We leave Dhayu 3 to the wolves, and send the capital ship to attack it.

Cash flow is positive! The Advisors wants to build some ships, but we are in no hurry. Some small amount of cash disappear during pirate raids on our mines and colonies.

Our 7 frigates at home can kill 1-2 pirate destroyers, but more than that and they will die easily.

2127.11.21 We meet the Tefnyl Hive. They are sluken, and got 8 colonies.



The capital ship chases the construction ship stuck in its hyperdeny field. It slowly catches up, and as the image is taken the first few torpedoes have connected. Soon it is a bit closer, then it uses its tractor beam. Then a salvo of phasers, and the constructor is dead. Hopefully this is the only construction ship of our local crew.

The AI wants another constructor, and we are down to 8 exploration ship. We build the constructor, and 5 exploration ships.

Research is progressing. We got our new star fighters, we research points defense. Engine research is at 85%, and colonization is at 49% heading for either completion or another setback.

Darn dark greens pirates of the south. They scratch of capital ship at Dhayu 3. With some positive cashflow and the annoying damage situation, we attempt a small spaceport build. A spaceport would also help somewhat in defense of the colony. In the long run this is not a desirable spaceport location, as too many draws resources, and this is a rather poor location close to the capital.

Research is complete in Enhanced Engines. Energy research moves to our racial hyperdrive system. Idiots. The military holds a demonstration screaming "we want cruisers!". Never mind enough size to build proper destroyers.

2128.08.05 79 unbuilt at the Dhayu spaceport, more than 30 modules are complete and we are relieved it got his far, as it will require some focus fire to destroy it completely.
Our cash store is increasing, we were at 30k, now it is 61k. We have both good bonus income and +2600 cashflow.

We spot a 13% complete pirate facility at Dhayu 3, a gift from our pirate friends after the capital going on the construction ship trip. It is easily destroyed by the 4 local troops.

With money incoming, military planners have all kinds of crazy ideas. A defensive base at the capital? We rather save the money for now.

Cashflow is at +7800. The capital revenue is up almost 20K in two years. A part of the reason could be that the colony governor is improving, although we have not noticed any messages, nor taken note of his abilities (32% income boost now).

We have found the Mortalen Capital. It is just to the right of the 3 pirate bases to the right of our area.

2129.01.01. Our scientist dies as foreign spies destroy our energy research station. We build a new one at the capital, and hope for some new scientific help.

2129.02.17 With 6 modules unbuilt the Dhayu 3 spaceport reports online. The capital ship is quick to head in for repairs (1 armor damaged, remember).

As the 3rd fleet falls asleep and drift off from Arexie, pirates sneak in for a raid and escape with jump inhabiting technology.

I am good at writing that I buy stuff and then fumble the buying part. Now, 1 construction ship and 8 explorers. For real!

One of the good Mortalu independents are no longer independent but the capital of the Mortalu Supremacy.

Arexie got 4 troops, we book 8 more with an eye for trying that pirate facility. This will take some time.

2130.02.05 A constructor completes an energy research station far to the west. It is a 25% bonus site with a station of uncertain life expectancy. So far the extra energy foxus and 25% bonus is welcome and we keep the energy research station at the capital. Remember, we want larger destroyers, cruisers, and stuff! It will however give colonization more time to find another serious cause for a setback.

2130.05.16 Signs of more quiet times. This should summon a large pirate attack, right? The cashflow is now slightly negative, probably due to extra explorers, construction ship, troops... Quiet times does not rule out rather frequent attacks on distant mines of ours, though.

2130.10.05 12 troops are ready at Arexia, and they start an assault on the pirate facility.



2130.12.14 Arexie is free of pirate facilities. The troop transport heads there to pick up troops to bring ot the capital.

Two destroyers at arexie get small damage when chasing away pirates. We start to swap the fleets at the north, and at the capital to manage repairs.



A sizable force of nasty pirate destroyers attack dhayu. Many of them die, but so does the spaceport. The capital ship takes 19 damage, but kill off about half of them. This is a proper beating on the capital ship, no rail gun silliness. The pirate fleet is stronger.

At approximately the same time they come with 4 ships at Arexie. That is not good news for our defenders there.

Both forces home to repair.

Good thing about it? Our cashflow is positive ;-)

2131.04.19. As we research our special hyperdrive, the energy guys start on construction size improvement. Finally.

The pirate destroyers are at 187 firepower. Our frigates at 35, and the destroyers not a lot better. It is not a fair match.

2131.07.22. We are down to 1 frigate, 3 destroyers, and the capital ship. Just about all of them damaged and at home or heading home for repairs. And of course, the troop transport and non-military ships did not get touched.

Shopping

69k cash, +4414 cashflow, but the real cashflow may be higher as lots of ships died quite recently.
A 8 ship attack by superior ships can't be stopped. However, we took down the construction ship of that crew, and it was a while until we saw them again after killing their home system mining bases. So? This ought to mean that their home system is full again, and that they can't replace the mines. Or so one could hope.

The 1 frigate and 3 destroyers could become a small capital system fleet.
The capital ship will return south.
We buy 14 destroyers for 36k with 9,3K maintenance, 5 for the northern system, 9 to go mine hunting.

And the pain continues

About spaceport busting. A while ago trade lines showed that a spaceport was in the Mortalen system nearest our area to the east. After a modest while those trade lines disappeared. Maybe our small spaceport is not the only one to have been destroyed?

And the near pirates are the only one attacking at our area which a fleet that size, we have had mines busted 1 sector away in both directions of similar sized fleets (or even a bit more ships), and the guys further to the east has killed single mines with their powerful capital ship and friends.

Ouch, 7800 credits lost in raid against Dhayu 3. The capital ship is on its way, hopefully before more raids of that kind.

Or not. 5271 lost.

2131.12.11 The 9 fleet ship is renamed Battle 2. Before shields are fully charged, it heads for a moon in the pirate system, hoping to not land on top of many ship. We got the new hyperdrive researched, but our destroyer design is on the old Gerax. The small build size really hurts, and larger yards are at 31%...

An escort is captured up north, and sent to retire. Every bit of tech research.

We reject am offer from the Sluken to declare war on the main Naxxilian Empire in exchange for their galalxy map.

Big mistake using slow boats to visit the pirate system. Defenders jump in, we don't jump out htat fast. 3 surive. With the racial hyperdrive it would be much better, but pirate destroyers are 3 times as powerful as ours... The last 3 join the ships in the capital system.

The northern fleet is chewed up by pirate rail guns, so is the capital ship. Or rather, they are scratched and scared.

A small lone dagger fleet wreck havoc on the ships in the capital system.

2132.07.27. As three destroyers of our most hated, light blue neighbors appear at Dhayu 3, the capital ship is too wimpy to fight. We have to allow it to repair, leaving the colony defenseless. Not that it has defense in a capital ship that flee at any sign of adversity, anyways.

2132.09.30. As the defenders are at the capital repairing, an approximate 10 ship fleet of the most hated light blues raid Arexie in the north. We decide to wait passive in the capital system rather than to send the former defenders back. Larger shipyards are at 70%. Not that it will do wonders, but it will at least help.

The former mortalen independent wants a free trade agreement. We agree.

In dhayu we have to scrap a captured pirate ship with no hyperdrive. Damaged armor again hurts the wimpy capital ship.

2133.05.05. We have completed research for Enhanced Construction. Enhanced shields next.

Old destroyer:
46 firepower.
300 shields
17 cruise speed.
12500 hyper speed.

New destroyer:
62 firepower
300 shields
13 cruise speed
23500 hyperdrive

As long as they can warp around they are fine, as they also enter hyperspace much faster. Firepower is not great, and movement speed is very slow. Too bad the pirates managed to steal info about that tech in a raid, but hopefully not the full research project..

2133.05.25 Efficient blasters are complete as we start retrofits. It bumps the destroyers to 70 firepower.

<This is where we look at automation and find most stuff at manual after a test to check a "feature". Maybe automating taxes will help rather than keeping them fixed at whatever the AI set them to ages ago?>

2133.06.13 Thoughts: We struggle mightily in defending our two minor colonies. We make sure troop recruitment is on manual for now, and up the troop count on each to 10 through recruitment. We have to stop raiders on the ground, as pirates chew up our defensive ships with great force in general, and annoying rail guns in particular.

We notice the new automatic tax master increasing taxes a bit. We await the economic impact. Money is at a ver modest 10K.

Cashflow goes up to 12101. Money quickly increases to 16743 and we hope the trend continues.

We have 10 remaining destroyers, we join them in one fleet. There is no sign of any frigate after the latest battles.

Status
I am unsure on how much the messing up in automation has hurt me. All but Research and Design on manual, and I believed that taxes and intelligence in particular were automated. A few tech stealing missions would not have hurt.

Beware, automation settings are at least somewhat shared between different saves...

To defend a colony against rail guns equipped raiders, I will need quite a lot of ships to rotate back for repairs of armor damage. Or have a local spaceport that repair the damage. The attempt at a spaceport in the south failed, because the most nearby pirates chased the capital ship and killed the spaceport quite easily. And that was not a railgun job, just a much more powerful fleet of pirates.

They have very powerful destroyers, and 10 of those will beat my capital and a small spaceport each and every time. They also arrived at the northern colony with a decent force. A 6-8 fleet of mine could not have stopped that attack, and would have to choose between fleeing and death.

Maybe starting with many pirates, nearby was a bit over the top? Especially when not picking a good reproduction race? The hope is that things lighten up a bit once we have put a new tax collector in charge. I was driven so far I checked if there was a gift option on colonies to hand them to some other empire, but no luck :) The tech and credits stolen in raids hurt.

For now, try to up the troop strength, and hope to beat them on the ground. And to build some fleets that pack a punch to really hurt them.

And colonization is at 82%! Maybe we will finally complete it and get some other high-tech research done? The recreation and medical modules would not hurt the capital at all, for instance.



This is our local possessions. Pirates crawl over our independents, but all those pirate mines in the systems west of the capital has not seen attacks. There are two mines (the gas mine rebuilt) just outside the Dhayu system in the south. Previously the local nasties has destroyed the gas mine multiple times, but this has survived for a few years.

Construction ships head far out west, where things have died a bit. We can see a northern mine that is more purple, that is because the Grim Claw has a mine in the system, and this is very hear the Grim Claw independent and the two small spaceports of theirs.

The independent with the fuel flag in the lower left is a securan colony we awoke with an exploration ship.



The good thing is that the others are not doing amazingly well. The Securans benefit from fast reproduction. We have noticed that the Mortalen capital has 2000M population than ours, we curse the slow breeding of our population.

Quite a few independents has started new empires. 2 Naxx ones, at least 1 securan, 1 mortalen. The Tefnyl Hive are friendly, and we know of a couple of their minor colonies.

I have not looked much at diplomacy, but suggestions are now enabled to maybe trigger me to ask for some free trade.



The full galaxy map with explored areas marked. We have a lot of exploration to do, the explorers run into pirates, and insist on exploring all their systems, including every piece of the asteroid field.

3 purple sluken colonies to the south. The darker purple new Mortalen Empire is close, in the system there is another Mortalen independent. Two new naxxilian empires are in the lower left, the other one has 2 more independents in the system, but all colonies are of poor quality.



Our sorry colonies. The population is rising in the minor colonies, but 16% tax of 24K revenue is no massive boost to our economy. The capital revenue is going up, and with automatic taxes rather than believed to be automatic taxes, the income should increase a bit.



Not much to report, apart from being down to 9 exploration ships. Mabye book some more in the next session? The racial hyperdrive with much faster jump speed should help their survival. The Gerax drive needs 15 seconds to jump, our new Velocity Drive 6 seconds.



With capital growth and higher tax rates, the tax revenue is up to 57k, from 37K at the last status. For the cashflow, a very recent recruitment of troops must be remembered. The hope is that troops can defend the colonies better than a fleet of 6 inferior ships.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 16
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/31/2014 8:03:49 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		In the hope of better times

A quick calculation of maintenance cost of the troops, since a lot are not yet recruited. They cost 900 each. There is 27, 7 on capital, 10 on the other two. A total of a bit over 24k of maintenance.

This is 9k more than the current economy report, cutting our cashflow from 12k to 3k. This is worth taking note of before buying a lot of ships.

Maintenance of the frigates are 776. For the destroyer it is 1027.

Frigate has 42 firepower, and 28 cruise speed.
Destroyer has 70 firepower, and 13 cruise speed.

Current theory is that we want frigates for raiding pirate mines, enough of them to kill quick, and the faster speed will help them close in fast. Our hyperdrive helps them in jumping fast. The destroyers on the other hand, are very slow, and use more time to close in for a kill.

Both of them turn slowly, much because our research department has never bothered improving on the very basic directional thrusters.

Cash is low (16K) and we wait a bit before building anything apart from 5 explorers.

The current plan is to allow the pirates to harass our two colonies, small raids are defated, and the recruited troops will hopefully help on larger raids.

The capital ship has armor damage, and returns from dhayu for repairs. 10 retrofitting destroyers are in the capital system and plans to stay there. Apart from that? A troop transport and no other military ships.

Two reports of pirate raiders escaping with 2-3k credits.

2133.09.19 As civilians are attacked and the capital ship enters the capital area for repairs, we consider that we must be sure to not lose this capital ship. It has a good hyper jump inhibiting module. And we want to kill any pirate constructors, which it is able to do using this. Our other ships can't do this job.

2133.10.24 The gas mine next to Dhayu is attacked by a Najarcan fleet. It has not been a priority to kill, apparently.

2133.10.29 We meet an exploration ship of the Secura Utopia to the north of our area. They are a 9 colony empire governed by the way of darkness. This is the 3rd encountered Securan empire, all with some colonies under control.

2133.12.04 As just one troop is left for recruitment, bonus income is good (23K), cashflow slightly negative (735) and cash decent (29K).

We book 9 frigates, which uses 28k cash and adds 7k maintenance. They become the new Battle 2. Battle 1 is the lone capital ship, and the 10 destroyers are renamed Home Fleet.

The capital ship heads back to Dhayu to defend for a short while before getting damaged again...

2134.03.14 At arrival, the capital ship kills the 3 Najarcan (blue-ish) ships over Dhayu 3. Their destroyers are powerful, and can damage the giant, but a few of them are easy kills.

We manually take care of ordering construction ships to retrofit. The cash dips around negative values, so this can be tricky :)

2134.05.21 As the new frigates are complete, they head off for a pirate gas mine in the rightmost part of the influence circle of our northern colony. We have killed Najarcan mines many times at that locations, and it is revealed with systems overview. This is a mine that will be captured by pirates, killed by pirates, rebuilt by someone... Many times.

As pirates steal research at Araxie, the 10 ship home fleet is told to move there. The troops are not enough protection.

4K raid vs 295k defense? Successful! Sneaky bastards.

2134.08.20. The Home Fleet of 10 destroyers is a total failure as protection of the northern colony. Fleets of frigates damage modules, and even if the pirates die, the home fleet need repairs. Back and forth incoming? They head for repairs with half of the ships damaged.

After waiting for a while for shields to charge up, the 2nd fleet of frigates heads off to a known mining location in the pirate system.

2134.10.19 The secura utopia declare war on the securan harmony. They are not that peaceful being ruled by darkness.

As battle 2 enters the pirate system, the photographer is asleep. They land at and kill the first mine, local defenders, 4 or 5 in number arrive and take pot shots. They jump around killing the two other mines, chased by defenders. They escape with order to jump to empty space "away" from the closest defender, and returns home for repairs. Two ships damaged, 3 pirate mines dead. 3600 credits found at one of them.

2135.02.11 We meet the Riksul Colonies, a human empire of 1 colony. We have seen signs of human presence in the form of some population and a human ambassador at the main Mortalen Empire.

The diplomacy screen say that the Najarca Council has 73 military ships. Not that many were at home, and we ponder where they are. We did not check their spaceport for signs of a major build queue.

Running out of known mines of our main pirate target, we decide to let the Home Fleet of destroyers and Battle 2 of frigates work on defending the northern colony.

[imagehttp://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/h426/Bingeling/Universe1/part7/homefleetlanding_zpsf0a50dd9.jpg[/image]

Home Fleet meet some old friends at landing. The pirates have more killed, we take losses as well. Home fleet home for repairs, as battle 2 arrives.

2135.06.01 Enhanced Shields are complete. Fusion Physics next. The elusive colonization is at 94%

Desperate times require desperate measure. In a dream we figure out that we would need a few more ships to bust the pirate large spaceport (a quick attempt in an alternate universe).

Cashflow has been at -5k with cash going between positive and negative. It is now at -1379 and the improvement may be partly because a couple of explorers and a destroyer has been destroyed.

2135.08.14 We notice a hidden facility of the Grim Guild at Arexie. It is dealt with by the local troops.

Battle at montu kudro (northern colony) shows that two of our destroyers destroy a pirate destroyer, but that our boys are left low on shields. There is a steady stream of small battles here as battle 2 and home fleet go back and forth. The capital ship is at Dhayu 3.

2135.11.14 Resisting temptation, we stay at Dhayu when we spot a construction ship of the sinister spaceways in our own northern area. It is a long trip, and we need defense, even if it has been quiet in the south for a short while. Now that we got shiny new drives on our own ships, the slow speed of the capital ship is painful to watch. Fast travel is however useful when going back an forth between Arexie and the capital spaceport for repairs.

2135.12.21 The Najarca Council was in battles outside Arexie, and somehow managed to start a hidden base build. It will not grow too old (13% complete).

2135.12.23 Girax 4 gas mining station to the left of Arexie, is attacked by a Najarcan fleet of some size. It is the first pirate attack ever at this location.

We notice that there is a good potential for fighting among the securans. The Free Talfagleu Utopia is an Utopian Paradise. Securan Harmony is Way of the Ancients. Secura Utopia is Way of Darkness.

As a destroyer is damaged defending Arexie (where 2 fleets stand guard), it is moved to its own fleet to repair and move to arexie. This is one micro manage way to keep ships presents and repaired. Ships also move between the two fleets to make repair and defense happen at the same time.

The girax 4 mine was captured. Battle 2 and its frigates heads over for a swift kill.

Money is at 27k, cashflow 1, explorer ships down to 10. We decide not to replace lost explorer ships, we need a few more military ones, and explorers are maintenance and generally too easily killed.

2136.03.12 A fourth Securan empire, the Yogame Paradise sends us a gift of 2503 credits. Thanks! A 1 colony empire of low population not noticed before this.


2136.03.28 The lone daggers arrive at Dhayu, with a weird but weak cruiser. Our capital ship kills one ship, takes 10 damage from railguns, and head back for repairs.

The Najarcans attack mines in the capital system, we have no ships present to defend them. A strike force destroyer is the guilty part at this time.

2136.05.09 While the defender is away, an old friend, the giant pirate capital ship, raid dhayu 3. Almost 13k credits lost. Ouch.

2136.06.11 We learn of the Xanath Alliance, an ackdarian empire with 2 colonies.

2136.06.28 Reseach in colonization is complete! This research started at 2103.09.24. We have no plan to colonize anything anytime soon, we got more than enough defending the two extra colonies we were stupid enough to invade at the start. They are however, starting to provide some small income at this time.

Proximity sensors are next.

2136.07.20 East of the northern colony, we saw the sinister spaceways build a mine at a site where we have killed najarcan mines many times. We did not chase the constructor, and did not hunt the mine at once, preferring defense. Now it is najarcan owned, and we assume the Najarcans have boarded it. Battle 2 and its frigates takes a trip to destroy it.

A former pirate frigate captured in the north is sent to retire.

2136.09.18 With a small setback of the good amount of cash stolen at Dhayu, we are up to 30k again with 2,5k cashflow. Maybe we can afford some help for the capital ship at dhayu soon? We may prefer to try build some cash, though.

Amounts less than 1000 may also disappear in mining station raids without further mention.

Battle 2 has to drop back to the capital system to refuel. Lets hope for some silence while they are away (home fleet of some destroyers are still at Arexie).

Where did our money go? Well, taxes and expenses are paid at a bit different time, we hope that is the reason why we are low on cash with no actions or messages to explain the loss of money.

2136.12.13 We have an armored factory at our capital. This will be a good addition for the future, and could explain where the money went (automated facility building).

A construction ship has fled from an ardilas at the left map a lot of times now. How about taking the hint?

There are many pirate mines, and a najarcan pirate fleet in the Mortalen Empire capital system. As far as we can see, they do not pay off the Najarcans. It reminds us that we are not the only ones struggling with the pirate menace.

2137.06.02 Improvements to the epsilon torpedo is complete. The research is focused on special forces. They itch for deploying military forces, while we struggle to defend our skies.

2137.06.15 A large lone dagger fleet with both the weird cruiser and the massive capital ship arrive at Dhayu 3. We order our capital ship to visit the mining system next doors for the time being. If they could damage it quickly with the small guys last time, this will be no easier.

Once the fleet has left, it will return to wait for smaller prey.

2137.08.14 As the big lone dagger fleet seems to set up camp, the capital moves about 1 sector east to a rumored Najarcan mine location.

In the hope that they can't steal money we don't have, we build 3 frigates that will swallow our positive cashflow, and most of our cash.

2137.10.03 The danuur 2 mine location of many pirate mine kills had our mine. The Najarcan arrive with a destroyer to capture it.

2137.11.26 As the capital ship kills the pirate mine in the east, dhayu 3 has empty skies and it is told to return.

2 more frigates to burn cash... More will be bought when cash is available until cashflow is -2k or worse.

2138.03.15 A lone dagger fleet attacks a capital system mine. We notice the troop transport heading out to capture one. We have mercy on it and tell it to retire. The mine is captured, and a new frigate will kill it off.

2139.03.02 it appears mines have appeared again in the pirate system. They apparently got one more constructor, at least. They may have captured a new one, or had one all this time.

We have had two fleets (battle 2 and home) at the northern colony, and we have added new ships to them. We adjust so that battle 2 has 10 frigates, which leaves home fleet with 6 destroyers, 9 frigates, and 2 frigates under construction.

We send battle 2 to the Jintawoe system where the pirate bay is. The object is mine hunting. We aim for the star, and have to pay attention as they don't end up sitting idle. We don't have direct knowledge of the mines, and can't target them.


2139.04.13. As Battle 2 approaches the pirate system, they can see a few ships at the spaceport. As the image is taken they are told to attack the gas mine that is top left.


As they have destroyed the mine, a defender is too late to do anything about it. This repeats itself for the second mine where just over 5k credits are found.


As they land at the last mine, they land atop of a lone dagger fleet, that will hurt our ships with their rail guns. Are they here with the same purpose?

As one frigate is left heavily damaged in the system, we can see the lone dagger fleet battle defending najarcans. The lone daggers capture the mine. A "green" Ikorrun ravager ship is also shooting at a najarcan. It is good to see pirate in-fighting.

Battle 2 repairs, and is queued to move back to Arexie. The raid was a success apart from very poor timing at the last mine. As the Home fleet has 22 ships with 5 being under construction, battle 2 is told to move south to Dhayu instead. Maybe they can help the capital ship if the lone dagger fleet arrives?

Before we scrap the damaged frigate in the pirate system, we observe the Sinister Invaders arriving to attack the now lone dagger mine. Pirates having fun...

And:


The old leader had a small income bonus, and a lot of negatives, this one is the opposite.


We notice the maintenance savings...

2139.07.17 We learn of the Qilla Domain, a sluken monarchy with 4 colonies.

-4k cash and -62k cashflow. Disruption is one thing, but lets hope that the shown cashflow is not real.

2139.08.30 We have researched fusion physics, and move on to intensified shield strength. We are not keen to use a fortune on retrofits at this time. Not that we can retrofit with -4k cash, but we can at least hope for some spaceport income.

2139.09.24 Cash at -14k. The economy screen reports 0 tax revenue.

Soon the attack spam from exploration ships will end, as we are down to 6.

2139.11.12 Battle 2 lands at dhayu as it is attacked by a lone dagger fleet. The capital ship and 9 ships of battle 2 head home for repairs. A bit poor timing, none of our ships were ready with the battle 2 fleet landing, and the capital having been pulled away by a pirate exploration ship.


2140.02.09 There is a proper little battle as the Grim Guild arrive to kill the gas mine in montu kudro. It was attacked by 4 ships of another pirate gang a short while ago, this time a larger Grim Guild fleet is used.

Lots of pirates die, 3 of our damaged, a few probably dead. We did not take note of number of ships, but we think at least 2 were lost.

2140.03.05 Tax revenue up to 45k, cash at -26k.

2140.03.26 The Grim Guild is back to really finish off that mine.


The home fleet is told to attack the alien cruiser, as more pirates land.

Lots of pirates die, home fleet goes from 19 to 13 ships. The cruiser? We are not sure, probably dead, but it may have jumped way in the chaos.

Home fleet heads off to repair and refuel, battle 2 is redirected to Arexie to protect the system. But if the larger fleets are a new trend, their 13 ship strength will be a tad low. Home fleet will return, though.

Getting rid of the leader was a long term good thing, but we were looking forward to maybe busting a pirate base soon, and our economy took a huge short term hit.

2140.07.22 As home fleet takes off for Araxie, the Najarcan hit a mining station in the capital system with a 10 ship fleet.They get away with a haul of steel and other resources. They hang around, raiding it time after time, but after getting the main loot the first time there is little to gain...

2140.11.17 The lone daggers arrive at Dhayu 3 with a decent fleet. The capital kill some, take 1 armor damage, flees, and is told to repair and return to the star of the system. Landing at the star is safer when one lack control of the colony space. At this time the najarcan are finally done raiding the capital system mining base and leave in the general direction of their known spaceport.

Cash is at -21k, cashflow -7k, we are recovering after the unrest period.

We had a nice trend of increasing military strength before the period of unrest... Dreams of bashing a large pirate spaceport were being formed. 40 ships could be a good amount for an attack.

2141.03.23 The lack of protection at Dhayu allows us to observe our two most annoying enemies battling out. The lone dagger and the najarcan. The grim guild are the northern presence, one other crew mess with a mining base now and then.

Even if we struggle, we are feeling more powerful than we did some time ago. We control one colony pretty well.

2141.04.27 We are researching continental colonization. Since there is colonization in the title, we got a setback due to researching on the wrong path. We really need some colonization talent at our research department.


2141.07.06 At its return to the dhayu system, the capital ship kill off some pirate presence. It has many components disabled, takes shield damage as more pirates appear, and jumps away after killing quite a few.

When heading back in it will get a few more of them.

2147.10.21 As the defenders up north kills some Savage Sun pirates attacking the system's mine, news about the Mortalen Empire declaring war on the Tefnyl Hive arrives.

We may want to go on a tour of conquest, but first we need to clear the nearby space of pirates, and that job has hardly begun.

Our sources report the Mortalen military strength at 852. Tefnyl hive at 2126. We are at 2633. The war declaration seems a bit optimistic at best.

Status

The situation is improving, but the unrest was not too convenient. We have probably not yet quite recovered fully from it.

Even if the ground forces repel some raids, the larger fleets manage to get something out of raiding Dhayu 3. It could be worth considering removing some troops to save maintenance, but that does not seem such a big deal.

With a fleet of 40 ships we could attempt a pirate base bust, as long as we are prepared to lose most of it. The economy is not there yet, but we are getting closer as our colonies grow, and the two smaller ones has reached quite high development level.

And some day, who knows? Maybe the capital will eventually have a medical and recreational facility? I guess we have a few continental colonization setbacks before that time, though.

The lack of cash reserve at the turmoil period was because of our "they can't steal what we don't have" policy of buying a frigate or two at every chance. Which has meant we went negative on cash, and have yet to fully recover.



Our area of operation. A mine at the very lower left corner is getting into an influence circle which will annoy someone. A mine is now in the influence circle of the Mortalen Empire colony SW of Dhayu. It annoys them alongside their lust of our incredible wealth.

The mine at the most upper left shares system with a Grim Guild mine, and for some reason it has not been attacked. This system has a 90% colony prospect the AI suggests to colonize. We do not want another pirate target on hour hands at this time.

One worry is that our two most annoying pirates the green/blue najarcan and the lone dagger with 3 bases (purple, crossed scull) to the right of that. These would be our preferred targets, but removing them would also help the Mortalen, which would be a shame.

There is no shortage of pirate targets when we get resources to hunt them.



Lots of empires with independents starting new ones. We can see that the Mortalen Empire is Furious with us. -23 for trespassing, -30 for coveting our resources.



Explored areas are highlighted. Very little is known about more than half of the galaxy. We know the territory of the orange Securan Harmony after stealing their territory map. We have found the Naxxilian capital (the main empire) south of our area. We have 3 colonies of the tefnyl hive, but have not found their capital. The tefnyl are our most logical friends.



Growing. The two minor one add some non-trivial amounts to our coffers. Since growth is by percentages, the progress should accelerate over time.



Not pretty. We have recovered after being at -27k at least. Cashflow is almost positive, and we hope that there is still a penalty for turmoil after the leader change.

2K for maintaining the troop facility is maybe not the most welcome expense at this time, but some armored forces could come in handy.



We have lost some military ships and explorers... Explorers are not replaced.

"good defense" would require approximately 20 ships in 3 colony systems, with spares in addition to this. The 26 surviving frigates and destroyers all sit at the northern colony, and manage that quite nicely, but do take losses when larger fleets arrive.

5 research stations... One extra energy bonus site (25%) at the west edge, one weapons station at a 16% bonus site in the capital system. It took a long time for the AI to build at that one. We could scrap 2 stations, but are OK with this for now. A scientist at the spaceport gives 14% to hightech.


(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 17
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 5/31/2014 8:19:32 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		This game has been one major pirate grind, but there is light ahead. The other AI empires are not that much more powerful, if at all. I think the many close pirates and slowed down research (with extra independents) was one step too far. A better home system, or at least better government or race would have helped.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 18
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/1/2014 7:34:30 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Just a comment about my defense fleets. I manually control them, and make sure to tell them to "Move to colony" after any battle. I want them very close to the colony.

They can, however, be dragged away by for instance an exploration ship in the system, and in very small scale situations like this I can randomly order them to "move to colony" just to be sure :)

Making a solid defense around a target is not easy in this game.

Edit: Oh, and if someone is reading this thread, at least a short comment or sign of life would be nice :)

< Message edited by Bingeling -- 6/1/2014 10:13:02 AM >

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 19
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/1/2014 9:13:40 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Forwards... or something like that

It is 2141.10.23, and we are still battling pirates without much progress. But our defenses have improved.

2141.10.28: We are alerted to a mine attack that comes as a suprise. It is a gas mine in the Libiya system, the closest system NW to our capital. This was where we killed a resupply ship early on, this time it is a resupply ship attacking our mine. The owners are the Talfagleu Army, the most powerful pirate clan according to the diplomacy screen.

It is our first meeting with them.

The nothern defenders, battle 2 and Home fleet, launches on an attack mission. Would any pirates planning to attack Arexie please wait a bit?

2141.11.25. As the capital ship destroys a lone dagger strike force at Dhayu 3, we ponder the fact that pirates usually arrive with half shields. They are probably newly built wessels thrown into combat.



The resupply ship has captured our gas mine, and is heading for the mine at a moon as our attackers arrive.

3 ships are damaged, the resupply ship is destroyed. Battle 2 finishes off the captured mine, and both head back to Arexie apart from a few ships dropping back home for repairs. The fleets make it back to their protection duty before any pirates drop by.

We get info about a ship location, but they are at a securan independent system to the SW. This is the second time. What is wrong with the Montu Kudro anomaly that served us so well?

2142.04.24 The capital ship attend to a single lone dagger ship approaching Dhayu 3, but suffers damage and flees before finishing it off. Yet again it has to head home for repairs. We place a bounty on all pirate railguns. At the same time a sizable lone dagger fleet raid two mines in the capital system asteroid field. One is captured, the other destroyed.

The capital ship heading home for repair has queued orders to destroy the capured mine, and return to Dhayu star.

2142: A spy returns with the galaxy map of the Naxxilian Authority. This gives us info about every system in the galaxy apart from a very few systems in the lower left corner, as far as we can see.



We can see a quameno empire having lots of room in the upper right. The securan empires are gathered in the central high.
Ikurro are the greens at the right edge. The sluken capital is straight south, and the Ackdar and Ugnari empires have some size towards the lower right.

Hmm, there is a decent quality Atuuk independent a bit to the NE. 14805M population. To grab or not to grab? Not right now, even if it could pay for its own defenses. There is a lot of potential workforce, though.

2142.09.25 As a single najarca destroyer tries to raid Dhayu 3, we notice that we got 21k credits, and -2647 cashflow.

Tax revenue is 58K. Cahflow was -62k right after the leader change, when tax revenue was 0. We may have had slightly higher tax income before that mess.

The capital ship is caught up in a small build queue as it heads in for repairs. That explains the pretty good bonus income (27k) right now.

To burn cash, we order 6 frigates. Cashflow is negative as it is, but we can live with that. Not all pirates are kind enough to attack Dhayu 3 with single ships who'se raids are mostly beaten on the ground, and we don't want to have significant money that they can steal.




2143.02.16 Our capital ship clean the skies of pests as it returns to Dhayu 3. Some minor amounts of resources and cash were lost in raids during its absense.

The lone daggers attack a mining base in Libiya, using a fleet including their nasty capital ship. Attacks at our mines near home is a rather new trend. The construction ships should rebuild them quickly, though, they love rebuilding mines again and again at indefensible locations.

The weirujum mining station in the capital system that provides all kinds of nice strategic resources, is a frequent target. This time the Najarcan.

2143.03.28 As newly built frigates heading north takes a detour to kill off a mine captured by the lone daggers as mentioned above, they find 6100 credits among the wreckage. At the same time the najarcan have fun with mines in the capital system.

3 frigates of the north are sent to the capital to destroy a captured mine. They should find their way back to the fleet leader when done.

As we capture a Najarcan frigate near Dhayu, we see they are using our very own Velocity drives. Darn raiders, and the trouble of keeping them away. No edge compared to them with regards to hyperdrives.

7312 credits is good payment for having to destroy a captured mine at home.



2143.08.24. The najarcan appear in force at Araxie. We spot a cruiser that from looks appear to be their own design. It has lower firepower than their destroyers, which makes us wonder.

We kill most of the attackers, lose a research breakthrough in the raid, and have 1 ship with 4 damaged components. Annoying as they are, the Najarcan are not using rail guns, which is a good thing. There is currently 32 ships in the two fleets defending Arexie.

If only we in addition had 20-30 ships to defend the capital system, 20 ships to help the capital ship defend Dhayu, and a 40 ship attack fleet...

We lose tech to the Najarcan in raids, we learn damage control from capturing and retiring their ship. That last part is nice, at least.

An adviser begs for retrofit, we retrofit the spaceport at least, at the cost of 2200. Cash at 18k, cashflow -4,2K. It is not like we are stuffed with cash to retrofit our fleets.

2144.02.22 We got new shields (Deucalios) and are now researching high volume thrust.



2144.02.24 The sinister spaceways are on their first(?) raid at Dhayu 3. Our capital ship, the Shield of Montu Kudro reports back about "No railguns, but they hurt a lot". Some pirates die, our guy has 18 damaged after having shields depleted. Back home to repair.

We notice the spaceport disappearing at the closest Mortalen Empire colony to our right. Looking at it, we can see that Najarca Council is 46% on the way to criminal network, and control of the colony. We do not struggle _that_ badly with their activities, at least.

2144.06.12 Not every space battle is worth a mention even if a ship is lost. Just so that is mentioned. Our northern defenders has some raid on the gas mine in the system to stop. There is quite a lot of pirate visists to the two colony systems, but sadly they seems to have stopped sending 3 ship frigate fleets.

We notice research in Tactical Interceptors. Carriers? We could need more build size for them to be buildable. Quite a lot more.



2144.10.27: And as our dear capital ship arrives at Dhayu and kills the Najarcans waiting, the sinister outlaws makes their presense felt. They have not been very active until now.

The shield of montu kudro reports back: They don't hurt quite as bad as the sinister spaceways, but their numbers were massive. We had to exit as a few Najarcans arrived and shields were low.

Out of the system to regain shields, 0 damaged by a narrow margin. They return to spank some Najarcan, but low on shields they leave after capturing one of them. Poor aiming destroys the captured ship's hyperdrive, and it is scrapped.

2145.07.04 The Tefnyl Hive rejected a free trade agreement saying they had other plans. The plans showed themselves to be granting us mining rights in their territory. Those Sluken are weird beings.

5 more frigates are ordered, an attack plan forms.

2145.09.19. News arrive that the Haakonish has started a build on the Bakuras Shipyard. The first mention of that activity.

Operation pirate bust

2145.11.03: All 3 fleets are told to refuel at the capital spaceport to gather their forces. Colony defenses are abandoned.

2145.11.22 A najarcan fleet attacks Arexie.

2145.12.03 Ikorrun Ravagers, infrequent visitors, attack Dhayu 3. They will end up in a battle with a Najarcan fleet.

Resources and tech disappear in the raids.

2146.01.26 As the capital ship refuels at the spaceport, all ships joins its fleet, Battle 1. The total force consists of the one capital ship, 35 frigates, and 7 destroyers.

2146.02.16 The fleet is told to move to the Jintawoe star, at the home of the Najarca Council. Having them in one fleet ensures that they travel at the speed of the slower capital ship.

2146.04.15 Entering the system, they find no mines, and a few ships in addition to the large spaceport. More forces of theirs hang around at our colonies. One of the pirate ships is limping back to base in a damaged state, proof of earlier combat in the system. We see that the spaceport is not at full shields, lacking maybe 20% or a bit less. The fleet is told to attack. 3 defensive ships chase an explorer of another pirate faction in the outskirts of the system.



As the ships dive into battle, the spaceport shields go down at a good rate.



Not long after, the spaceport has taken serious damage



As the spaceport blows up, we find a measly 3946 credits among the debris. Attention turns to the few ships that are present.

2146.05.17 We have missed some messages, the Qilla Domain completes the shipyard wonder.

The attacking fleet has gone from 43 to 36 ships, most of them are damaged. 12 ships are unable to jump with the rest when they head for repairs. The capital ship is unharmed and heads for Dhayu 3. The 23 ships heading for repairs are put in a new battle 2.



Just as they leave the system, a pirate flag pops up. A construction ship of the Hidden Claw Industries has started building a spaceport. We have not had issues with these, but we don't want them here. The capital turns with order to attack the construction ship.



Like at the last constructor kill, the Shield of Montu Kudro slowly gain ground, and the torpedos start to connect. After a while the shields go down, and the lovely sound of construction ship explosions are heard as the tractor beam of the capital ship starts to tug at it. Soon the construction ship is just a memory and a collection of space dust.

We notice that the nearby former Mortalen Colony has become owned by the Lone Dagger Ravagers. We are a tad confused as the network build was reported to be by the Najarca Council who still exist as a clan.

For now we leave the damaged ships in the former pirate system, hoping that a construction ship may drop by.



Our big friend is welcomed back by a fleet of Lone Dagger ships wielding nasty railguns as usual. Back home for repair after doing some damage to them.

2147.01.30 As the 23 freshly repaired members of battle 2 heads towards Arexie, a few of the very damaged ships left in the former pirate system have repair manually queued.

It is clear that we can pack a punch, but lack of credits do not allow a lot of these attacks in a short timespan.

2147.02.20 We change our mind. We send rescue boats and scrap the damaged ships in the Jintawoe system to save maintenance.

As Battle 2 arrive at Arexie, they chase away a Najarca escort in the system. The diplomacy screen tell about 81 Najarca military ships. But do they have a base to operate from? Time will show if they remain active.

It is 2147.03.25 and we have dealth the first blow to a pirate clan. Hopefully the first of many.

Status

Currently I am a bit unsure if things will be better or not in the short term. We have struck a blow on an annoying pirate group, but we have seen them in battle with other annoying pirate groups. Will the pirate raids have the same frequency, with the exception that now every raid carry rail guns?

Some southern pirate groups have started raiding Dhayu 3. The nothern Grim Guild have seemed mostly busy elsewhere for a while. The lone dagger ravagers are the most annoying, apart from those we have already hit hard.




We can see the najarca system where the pirate base was, and the signs of its independent colony. To its left is the lone dagger owned system that used to be a mortalen colony. The capital ship is just doing its final docking moves at the capital (for repairs), and we can see the green color of the sinister outlaws as they are present in the dhayu system.

The system just NW of the capital is Libiya where we have over time killed two pirate resupply ships, and where we have now lost our mines. Constructors are busy doing stupid stuff.

The Dhayut love Tyderios, we got one source, and one construction ship is on its way to the very lower right corner of the galaxy to build a mine for tyderios and jakanta ivory. Go, AI, go! The construction ship can be seen in the right part of the image near a pirate flag. it won't do useful work near home any time soon.

There is a galaxy map shot earlier in the post, I am not bothering with a new one right now...



The diplomacy screen should now show just about every empire in the galaxy.



Growing, but oh so slowly.



Space battles help the economy. 35 frigates and 7 destroyers (and the capital ship) headed for the pirate base. 17 frigates and 6 destroyers came back. Frigates are not my prefered ship type, but the destroyers are too slow (but maybe not for pirate base attacks), and the escorts are even worse.

Considering we lost 18 ships, the cashflow is a tad disappointing.



I can't see a reason here why we have just 1k cashflow. Notice that we have 17 frigates with 12k maintenance. We just lost 18 frigates, and our cashflow was not -11K before the pirate battle. More like -2k or something.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 20
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/1/2014 1:47:52 PM   
Icemania


Posts: 1847
Joined: 6/5/2013
From: Australia
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling
Edit: Oh, and if someone is reading this thread, at least a short comment or sign of life would be nice :)

Reading it all dude ... keep going until the entire galaxy is yours!!!

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 21
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/1/2014 2:37:58 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Of course it will be mine. Quite a bit of it, anyways. I am bad at declaring war, but that would not be a good idea at the current time, anyways. Not that it prevents AI empires from doing so.

Pirates can be a royal pain, and I may have gone a bit far in that regards. But a good thing is that one really learns to hate the most active pirate crews, and destroying them gives a good amount of satisfaction. Later in the game empires can do good things that make me hate them as well.

(in reply to Icemania)
Post #: 22
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/1/2014 4:17:41 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		To a better future?

2147.03.25. We are still not well off, and we have just position our fleets after the pirate assault. We lost almost half of our ships. The economy is not strong.

Could a fix be within reach?



Some distance to the NE there is the juicy Atuuk independent.



We don't know what the defenses are. We don't know what the ruin is. But we know there is a lot of potential slaves that could work for us.

We know that there are a lot of pirate bases nearby.

This could, depending on corruption, make a radical impact on our economy, and at least pay for a defensive fleet to protect it. We hope...

One troop transport is ordered, as that is all we can afford right now.

2127.05.08 Tactial interceptors are done. Research on shockwave torpedos are started.

This enables the tech to build carriers.

2127.05.20 We get message about the Haakonish and Quameno ending war, we saw the Haakonish grabbing two minor colonies in quick succession. Lots of wars involving the Haakonish ends.

2147.06.17 We have enough cash to order another troop transport. We will buy frigates and add to the battle 2 fleet (of frigates and destroyers) every time when we can afford them.

2147.09.07 We complete research in continental colonization. Coordinated control next, 4% maintenance savings? Yes please.

2147.09.12 The first troop transport is complete. It is told to load troops at dhayu 3 where the capital ship is present. When complete the other troop transport will load at Arexie.

Why two transports? The independent has a massive population that boosts defense. It may have a pirate base, even though it said no in that screenshot. And we do not want to recruit any crap atuuk troops, so any troops will have to be brought in anyways. Also, raid defenses...

2147.10.14 A tefnyl hive gift og 3640? Yes please. This is only our second gift ever as far as we know. A few times we have sent AI suggested gifts in the 300 range.

Our carrier design still lack fighter bays. The AI designer can probably not fit them to the small max size. And we can not afford them, anyways. Even if we could, they need some meat shields.

The troop transport at dhayu loads 6 troops. It leaves only 3, and we tell the colony to recruit 3 more. To prepare for the incoming load, we recruit 2 more at Arexie.

2147.11.28 The second troop transport is ready, and is told to load at arexie. The first is just finished loading at Dhayu and move to arexie. We verify that battle 2 has good fuel levels. We put the two troop transports in a new fleet and name it invasion.

Free trade with the Qilla Domain. They are Ikurro and far away, it won't hurt.



2148.02.11: As the troop transport arrives to load at Arexie, the lone daggers arrive with a somewhat large fleet. The troop transport takes a few damage quickly, but is luckily still empty. The battle 2 fleet is lower in numbers than before the spaceport attack, and is told to move to a nearby system alongside the invasion fleet.

The troop transport has its hyperdrive disabled and is badly damaged, including its hyperdrive. 3 frigates take rail gun damage.

The full troop transport is near the action, but was luckily not quite there yet.

In good micro manage fashion we:

1: Tell battle 2 to move to the star of the Atuuk independent system (Sipan).
2: Afterward we tell the 3 damaged ships to repair, which will send them home, and they should later rejoin the fleet.
3: After a short wait, we tell the working troop transport to attack Sipan.

The repairing fleet members will lose their repair order if the fleet has a new order, but they will be in the repair shop long before battle 2 reaches Sipan.

Hopefully... If in a pinch, battle 2 can be told to attack by multi selecting the ships, and for movement moving the fleet leader is enough.

As the battle fleet land in the system, we will have time to stop the troop transport, and they will pull any present pirates away from the colony.

2148.03.13 Military refueling rights from the Tefnyl Hive. Not that we need it now, but signs of some friends in the galaxy are welcome.

2148.06.22 The AI being AI... It heads for advanced jump stalling as it finishes high volume thrust. We doubt it will ever equip the module on anything smaller than cruisers, and we can't even build a proper destroyer.



Battle 2 heading for Sipan with Invasion fleet of now 1 transport trailing. A single frigate came from a different spot, possibly after doing its own escape from the Arexie battle and somehow escaping damage.



2148.04.12 We notice a pirate flag and see a construction ship next to Dhayu. The Fierce Moon Minerals have not caused us trouble, but we will cause them trouble. The capital ship is next doors, now with an attack order on the construction ship. It will do its thing again, and it will work until someone creates a speedy construction ship.

As the 3 damaged ships of battle 2 exit from repairs, they are told to attack a captured mine west of the capital. Darn pirates and our inadequate protection level.


As the lead ship of battle 2 enter the Saipan system, a large lone dagger fleet is present and battling some ships of the Savage Sun Ventures. The colony has 1 atuuk militia, recruiting one more. It is at max population with 20630M.

We don't want to battle that lone dagger fleet in a fair fight, and battle 2 will be micro manage to jump around the system, hopefully with a trail of pirate ships behind it.

I watch the approach of invasion, the position of the pirates, and battle 2 closely. I even slow down the game from my usual 2X speed to 1X... With inefficient moving (the battle 2 fleet will move all to the star before going on), I micro manage their evasive actions.

The "enemy" pirate around the colony makes some lone dagger ships hang around to kill it. As invasion is close, the coast is not clear, and we tell it to move to empty space a bit outside the system. There is a proper pirate battle at the colony.

As the "absent" battle 2 members kill the mining station we recive 3600 credits and are free to order battle 2 as a fleet. We notice 22k cash on hand, 4k cashflow, and buy some frigates (5 for 19k).

As pirates battle at the colony, none are too busy following battle 2 after the first couple of jumps.

The pirate battle takes time, but time flows slowly while jumping around. The lone daggers appear to use gravitic weapons, we have been exposed for their rail guns until now.

Various other ships also drop by, like from the Talfagleu Army, and an escort from a Securan empire.


A Free Talfagleu Utopia colony ship appear. How many colonyships have failed to colonize here? We are happy there are pirates present to chase it away, though.

As the battle seems to end, and many ships left the systems, new lone dagger ships appear around the colony... Waiting (while moving)...


We get tired of hoping for "free skies", and order battle 2 to attack an escort at the outskirts of the pack. The troop transport is told to attack the colony.


The transport is slipping in, and we spam "attack" orders to overule its flight instinct. That is bad news for the transport, though, it has done its final mission.


The transport drops it troops, but is doomed. The invasion seems like a scary fight, but there is only one defensive troop, and as it is focus fired on and dies the colony is ours.

Battle 2 is sent to repair.

The colony is filled with a whiny bunch. They dislike us (the dhayut), the dislike our recent conquest, they are terrified about recent pirate raids, and they lack resources to grow.

The start revenue is at 86k, and they are too angry to tax. Hopefully we can improve on both, but keeping the skies clear at this spot will be a challenge. The corruption is at a nasty 46%, and not a regional capital tech in sight.

At least the population should help repel raids...

The colony is a carbon fibre source, and is probably a good spot for our civilian ships to get killed at. But we gain some modest amount of credits, and recruit frigates. This will be a priority to defend.

The influence circle around Sipan includes quite a few resources including our beloved tyderios, two supernova sites with modest weapon research bonuses, and at least 3 pirate bases. It is not a densely packed area of space, but the circle is huge.

2149.03.07 Battle 2 is on its way home, and we have cash incoming, maybe in part from civilian purchases after capturing our new colony. As new frigates are

bought we start adding them to a new home fleet. At this time, including ships under construction, we have 38 frigates and 6 destroyers. And the capital ship.

Battle 2 has 34 ships at this time.

2149.05.23 Another Fierce Moon construction ship triest to set up a spaceport In Adiga next to Dhayu. Again our capital ship takes off.

2149.05.30 We lose some of our troopers at Sipan 4. These raids hurt quite a lot, and they take the most of the beating. Against better judgement we start recruiting some Atuuk troops. Wave after wave of raiders arrive, adding to the attack strength. We interfere with the AI and dismiss a troop general that spawned with -20% defense strength.

Saipan is not a friendly place for anything, so adding troops with a new transport is out of the question at this time.

2149.08.03 All dhayut troops at Saipan has been killed by pirate raids. We need a good number of troops to share raid damage alongside space defenses to control this spot properly.

Earlier, I wondered why Dhayu 3 had less than 10 troops, now I know what happened there...

We notice the construction ship almost outracing our capital. We ask 5 complete frigates in the 10 ship home fleet to attack it. They are a speedy bunch.

We also notice that there is a decent, pirate controlled mortalen colony in our Sipan area of influence. Battle 2 heads for sipan star, but will struggle with the range. They had barely enough fuel to get back to the spaceport the last time.


Faster guys to the rescue.

As the 34 ship battle 2 enters Sipan, it is renamed Sipan fleet. Pirate raids have been small scale lately, but the low fuel level of the fleet members are a worry.

A tiny contribution from Sipan 4. 1% tax of 212K revenue. The capital has 205K revenue, but 27% tax.

If we can nudge happiness high enough for even 10% tax it will be a decent income bonus. After recruiting some more troops, the cashflow is solid negative, money near 0, and we dream of a new troop transport and a shipment to Sipan.

2150.05.20 With Battle 2 standing guard and the Sipan system is at peace, we see full freighters carry goods to Sipan 4. Tax at 2%...

One troop transport is ordered as we got some cash on hand. Troops are garrisoned to be protected from pickup. Maybe time has not moved much, but it has been pretty quiet on our other colonies. Which should mean that some pirate clans got big attacks incoming.

The 10 frigates of the home fleet does some house cleaning near the capital. Annoying pirates are capturing and destroying mines.

2150.06.28 Fierce moon? Again? A third construction ship of the same crew. The capital and home fleet are sent, the home fleet is far enough away to be there last, hopefully. Fierce Moon is a decent size pirate group, with two known bases in the central part of the galaxy, far enough from home.

2150.07.30 Sipan Fleet interfere with a small raid, their first Sipan action since arriving for the second time.


2150.09.12 The construction ship was killed by the home fleet frigates. Home fleet returns to the capital, the capital back to dhayu where it finds the Sinister Spaceways. They still hurt, and the capital takes some modest damage. It has to repair.

Our economy is strained with negative cashflow and slightly negative cash at most times.

We queue a gas mine build at the caslon source in the Sipan system. We are not full of optimism that it will ever be completed, nor survive for a long time. It could be that the initial hail of pirate raids were because it used to be independent, though.

2150.11.29 The Ikoriun Ravagers are very annoying as they attack mines around the capital with single ships. We know their main base quite a bit to the south and east, and a small spaceport straight west at the map edge which is pretty close. When the capital ship is repaired we plan to add it to the home fleet to kill the small spaceport, hoping it will stop this activity.


2150.02.05 Home fleet with the capital included heads for the pirate base.

2150.02.18 Cashflow jumps from -7k to +2k or thereabouts, and we notice that tax level at Sipan 4 has been upped from 3 to 8%.

The troop transport is built and full, and is told to unload at Sipan 4, and to return to the spaceport.

As members of the Sipan fleets report low on fuel, we ask them to refuel at Sipan 4, using the little fuel that is available. There is not anywhere near enough to refuel all at once. It is annoying, it is micro management, but we lack proper infrastructure.

2150.04.22 Two small lone dagger ships appear at Sipan 4 with their trusty rail guns. One ship damaged, and is told to repair and to join home fleet. I will shuffle ships between for repairs. Right now home fleet is busy, though.

2150.05.08 High Energy Cohesion gives new torpedoes, research in High Power Blasters is started, and will give new blasters.

We have no will to retrofit, and little money.

2151.06.14 The Securan Harmony agree to trade Loros Fruit with us. They also send us a gift of more than 19k. We have no ill feelings towards them at this time, keep it up!

We can be bought off any evil plans, everyone; feel free!

2151.06.19: As home fleet lands in the pirate system, they spot approximately 6 ships at the base. At the same time the lone daggers attack a mine in the capital system.

Home fleet see no movement among the ships at base, they may be under construction. They attack. The spaceport has firepower in the 200s.



They close in on the target.



And frigates are hurt, but the spaceport is taking real damage too. (The capital ship design was changed to "all weapons" on stronger targets).

The base is destroyed, most frigates are damaged, but none of them destroyed. The capital ship creates a new Battle 1, the home fleet goes home for repairs.

2151.08.03 Advanced Jump stalling complete, lets go for Accelerated Shield Recharge. Idiots. "We want cruisers, and proper destroyers, carriers and stuff".

Securan Harmony wants free trade. They give us gifts, Loros Fruit and are powerful? What is there not to like about them? We accept like the slave of profits that we are.

We notice crasy 48k credits and +7k cashflow. Saipan 4 tax still at 8%. 10 new frigates for home fleet.

Even if we are not retrofitting a lot, we do build new and updated ships. So new research is not all wasted...

All this while the lone daggers mess with the home system mines using a "large" fleet.

The cashflow improvement is not because of Sipan 4 increasing its tax percentage (8%) but its revenue which is at 329K now. Arexie is also getting into useful territory with 71K revenue.

So far only singles and pairs of pirates for the sipan fleet. Arexie has not seen raiders since battle 2 left at the raid just before they left to support the invasion.

2151.11.03 With some doubt, we decide to try build a small spaceport at Sipan 4. We intend to retrofit it to medium when complete, and then to consider a further upgrade to large. It will add some defense, maybe help draw in caslon, and work as a repair station.

Now we are just waiting for that large pirate raid to appear somewhere.

Cashflow is up to +24k, while cash is still low. Sipan 4 has tax rate increased to 14%.

Sipan fleet is standing guard, a few ships anxiously waiting for some caslon, but not critically low on fuel.

Colonies at home see less action, but writing so should summon a painful raid or two.

Battle 1 is refueling, heading for the Dhayu system. Home fleet is repairing at the spaceport.

A construction ship that took on the job to build a fuel mine at Sipan is closing in on the system.

It is 2151.11.10, and things are looking better.

Status

Things are better, and cashflow did a massive jump just at this point. At least 3 freighters are heading east to pick up loros fruit.

Pirate activity has been less frequent, but that may in part be because the mines near my area are mostly all destroyed...

The atuuk colony is a gold mine even with low tax and massive corruption. They carry a total -21 for being in a dhayut empire, and being enslaved. Being poor in the first place helps in viewing it as a gold mine.

They still have a -4 for lacking some resources, and they have a +2 because we are such nice and popular guys. After invading here we are still respectable.

Colonization will not be a priority for a while yet. There is an 80% continental in the capital system, and a 80% desert within a reasonable distance NW. The "free" nearby independents are all of low quality, but 4000M Dhayut in a 65% desert of the najarca system (where the pirate base was) could be added if we feel in control. The pirate independent that was mortalen next to it is low pop, but could be added to get rid of the pirates and "tighten the borders".

As of now, defenses are still inadequate, but cashflow could help fix that.


Lots of pirate bases that may be attacked, there is no danger of a shortage any time soon.

When hunting relentlessly for pirate constructors it is worth paying a bit attention. We may notice a construction ship NW of Montu Kudro. That one however, is owned by the Secura Utopia. I have a history of killing empire mines believing them to be pirate. The owners may become annoyed if you do that a lot...

Battle 1 is refueling, Home fleet is repairing. Sipan fleet is at Sipan. And our area does not exactly look tightly patrolled...


It is getting pretty well settled.

The Loros Fruit pickup point is an Orange colony being to the SE of their northern capital. Right next to a cluster of 4 bright brownish Haakonish colonies.

The naxxilians have colonized towards us.

We are 1st in population and strategic value after enslaving 20000M furry animals. That colony is #4 on the top colony list, which should include all the big colonies of the galaxy.


A good addition. And the rest are improving. There is room for improving development on our new colony, which has a +15 ruin bonus as well.


We found more cashflow. And foreing trade bonuses has just started appearing. Cash however, sit at 285.


The 24k cashflow is put into perspective when we see that 50 frigates has a 28k maintenance. Buying 50 frigates would cost 210k, though, and have 34k maintenance. Quite a lot of the existing frigates has not seen retrofits for a long time.

At the last status we had 10 mining stations, and 6 gas mining stations. We have gained gas mining station, possibly due to a relentless hunt for Tyderios, and

we have lost 4 mining stations. Pirates has wrecked both the capital system and the systems to the west of it. Constructors have been busy travelling to distant lands to place rather doomed mines.


< Message edited by Bingeling -- 6/1/2014 5:24:54 PM >

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 23
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/2/2014 10:54:48 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Planning for the short term future

So, we have stabilized Sipan somewhat, and discovered a good cashflow. Money is not there, though, but that ought to change. What are the short term actions?

We need higher military strength. We have a few atuuk troops at Sipan, and should get some stronger Dhayut troops there, retiring the weak troops.

We should get some armored troops for flexibility, we already got the facility needed at the capital. The capital should also have some more troops garrisoned, so some of the money will go to troops.

Annoying pirates should be dealt with.

The 34 ship Sipan Fleet is not much stronger than it should be. We lack confidence that there will be no attempted raids, and we just started a spaceport build that is currently stalled on Hydrogen. It is quite near our friendly Securan, and we have quite a bit of trade with them, so getting that should not be an issue even if we have to rely on foreigners. Keep in mind that this was a colony swarmed by pirates until quite a short time ago, its had all kinds of colony related shortages when captured.



Colonization is not the best idea until we got more population, but maybe there is another target? Circled is another Atuuk independent that is the "capital" of the Grim Guild. It is dark purple, and very stealthy due to that, but the yellow circle marks it.

17348 max population
92% quality
Riphidium Ale

What is there not to like, apart from not having 3-4 more good resources? It also should give control of some good mining systems, currently pirate infested.

What would be required to take it? I don't have a clue, so lets drop something by to check the defenses. And then have it leave in a hurry.

For moving troops around and possibly taking that colony, we need some transports. We got none.


Actions

2151.11.10 is the start date.

We queue up the planned troop building and realize it may swallow most if not all of our cashflow.

We make sure Arexie and Dhayu 3 has 5 garrisons and 6 spares, one for each.
The capital has 5 garrisoned troops. We recruit 4 armored troops, and 5 troops to be garrisoned for a total of 10. And 4 more to have spares.

One well fueled frigate of the Sipan fleet joins Home fleet, but is told to move to Atuuk star, where the pirate colony Beate is. Soon it leaves the homef leet due to the fleet being moved around, causing it to take a detour before it can be redirected.

Fleet?
Battle 1 is the capital ship which is refueling at a gas mine, and will head for Dhayu.
Home fleet is repairing, and with 10 or so ship under construction will have 23 frigates.
Sipan Fleet has 27 frigates and 6 destroyers for a total of 33.

We are sad to see that our ships move more slowly. We have a new colony, a larger empire, and the game is more zoomed out ;-)

We spot a new pirate flag south of Dhayu, Battle 1 moves to the system just in case the constructor is building it. It is the Fire Bandits, a crew we have not had any conflict with, and seems to be based in the S and SE part of the galaxy.

Home Fleet moves to Dhayu just in case. The capital system got no mines, so no need to protect those rocks, anyways. The research station at the bonus planet is also gone.

2152.02.07. The Sipan defenders waste a single pirate escort arriving. A constructor flees after being attacked in a system just NW of Sipan. Such a surprise, the system only got two pirate spaceports in it...

We found one troop transport, maybe it is the one shot up at Arexie, which was heavily damaged, and which has been fixed by an automated constructor? We may have scrapped that one, but we know we left it there for a while... We book 2 more as we got some funds. The first load of 6 troops will go to Sipan.

There is a lot of work to do around Sipan. A pirate controlled colony, and 3 systems with at least 5 pirate spaceports, all in the influence zone.

2152.03.26 The small spaceport at Sipan is complete, that was not a slow build at all. We start a retrofit to medium.

We notice the Mortalen Empire ending a war. We check that they still hate us, and that their military strength is an impressive 42. That is the same firepower as at least some of our frigates.

Battle 1 arrives at the pirate system, and finds a small spaceport that is much stronger than the one we killed (498), but not as well shielded. The clan's resupply ship is also there. For now it returns to Dhayu 3.

The frigate scouting the Atuuko system finds that the colony is defended by 1 atuuk troop and controlled by the Grim Guild. In additon the Cruel Claw Pillagers have 2 small spaceports built at the same gas giant. What a mess. The main challenge in colony control will be to remove any pirate facilities, that will be a proper battle.

We need a fleet presence to attack it, although there was only 1 cruel claw ship near the colony. An we want some ships at home, so more frigates, please.

2152.06.21 We battle our troop transport at Arexxie to make sure it has 6 infantry and 0 armor that it will unload at Sipan 4. We use to move button at the troop tab in the colony screen.



2152.06.23 The awaited pirate raid arrives with a twist. We see an attack warning at Dhayu 3, and two pirate groups land at once, and shoot at each other. The capital ship has just landed itself, home fleet is there with at least quite a few of its 22 ships present.

It is a mess. Two small raids at the colony, one fails the other leaves with 100 credits (We are broke :). A lot of pirates die, some escape. The capital ship and most of the frigates are damaged by rail guns or otherwise, and both fleets are told to repair. Staying at Dhayu was not a bad hunch after all.

We notice 51k cashflow after it being at around 10k when we did the troop purchase. Sipan revenue up to 469K, tax up to 20%. The AI is building a military academy, which is a total waste. Armored atuuk?

We rejoice as the Sipan fleet can refuel at the newly built gas mine in the system. At the same time Sipan Spaceport is done retrofitting to medium. Right now we lack money to do anything at all, so a further retrofit will have to wait.

The lone daggers attack a gas mine NW og Montu Kudro. Savage sun attack the gas mine in montu kudro. We still lack forces to defend everywhere, especially with all of the ships back home damaged. Maybe we should have some smaller fleets to hunt single ships that annoy us? They will not feel well if they stumble on those 12 ship lond dagger fleets, though.

2152.08.17 Sipan 4 has 1158 Loros Fruit in store, the first colony to recive it. Nice. It still has a message about insufficient amounts of strategic resources.

2152.08.30 We get some cash on hand again, and use it to buy frigates. Just 15k, but with 43k cashflow and 40k bonus income there should be more avialable over time. We order 3 new construction ships, but forget to specify where to build them. The one being built at Dhayu 3 could have issues. We need them to build mines at the pace at which the pirates destroy them.

Later the same day, the lone daggers attack Aurexie with a decent fleet. It is a long time since this one has been attacked, but it reminds us that we are not forgotten. Fleets are not yet done repairing.

2152.10.16 A pirate frigate tries do destroy Sipan 7 gas mining station, where the 33 ship strong sipan fleet is refueling. Bad timing on their part. They will reapper and try to board it, but our brave miners shrug them off. We take note of the Savage Sun as annoying.

2152.12.24 A tiny gift from the Ikurro, and 20k from the Haakonish. Thanks! Casflow is at crazy 103k, and the 33k we got is spent on 8 frigates to be assigned to a future Battle 2 fleet.

We notice that the destroyer design is no longer at 13 cruise speed, and that we should start buy some of those as well.

Frigate has:

29 cruise speed.
42 firepower
360 shields

Destroyer has

21 cruise speed
102 firepower
540 shields

Ranges are almost equal, a tiny edge to frigates, maybe due to a bit less static use?

With care taken, we order 3 of the sipan fleet ships to retrofit at the spaceport. That way it is no risk of the whole fleet being stuck if resources are lacking. In a short while when cash reaches 19k, we will retrofit Sipan spaceport to Large. Added protection, and hopefully a future good ship building site.

We spam some destroyers (and frigates) when we get money, building battle 2 to decent strength.
We also got a military academy at the capital, and can recruit special forces. With no futher planning, we recruit 3 of them.

A load of troops is delivered at Sipan 4, 12 are garrisoned, the atuuk troops are disbanded. A good store of caslon at Sipan allows the Sipan fleet to refuel. Sipan 4? 502K revenue, 27% tax. 125k tax from Sipan 4, 83K from the capital.

Sipan spaceport seems to build civilans and retrofit just fine. Sipan fleet continue retrofitting a few a time until the whole fleet retrofits (when many have already retrofitted and will just refuel).

Sorting by maintenance and firepower in the ship list is a nice way to detect those needing a retrofit. Showing all designs in the design screen, and sorting by sub role shows which designs are in use, and how many that use them.

2153.07.06 As the new Battle 2 is at about 10 complete ships, it moves to Dhayu to allow home fleet to retrofit. The retrofit is most important for the 6-7 ancient destroyers of the sipan fleet, though.

2153.11.09 Money, so much money, got to spend it all! 23 ships for battle 2, destroyers for battle 1 (the capital ship), keep going!



2153.12.24: Ikuriun Ravagers arrive at Dhayu, reminding us that even if we build ships, pirates still exist. These did chase our capital ship when alone. Result? 5 ships damaged in battle 2. 3 ships captured for retirement, no raiders on the ground.

For now we keep the larger sipan fleet, and try to balance home fleet and battle 2 at 23 ships with a mix of destroyers and frigates. Battle 1 is trying to become 23 ships as well, and includes the capital ship.



2154.02.06. A construction ship building a mine detects a pirate base being built not far from Dhayu. Battle 1, now wiht some extra ships, and the non-repairing ships of battle 2 launches from Dhayu (dragging a box and selecting works, just make sure not to send any transports or construction ships). The Spaceport is reported to have some firepower, and must be almost complete. Hopefully the construction ship is there. The owners are Lone Trade Interstellar, who have been based further east, but have not bothered us.



A bit of juggling makes ships arrive at approximately the same time. The construction ship is gone, though. We discover that some of our ships are on half shield, probably because they are newly built. that is not ideal...

The base goes down, the destroyer that is taking a beating from base fighters ends up with 62 damaged, or easier to count: 8 working. It is scrapped.

We spot an instellar traders colony ship in a system a short jump north of this battle. Battle 1 heads by to kill it. Battle 1 and 2 are otherwise trying to get back to Dhayu 3.

2154.09.19 We are lining up for an assault at the pirate colony of nice value. And an advisor talks about defensive base at Sipan 4, and we build one both there and at the capital. Cashflow is still extremely relaxed as ships have been booked to fill the 3 fleets to 23 ships.

2154.11.14. Battle 2 and Invasion are both full of fuel at the capital. Battle 2 is told to move to Atuuko star. Invasion to dead space near Atuuko. Battle 2 has 23 frigates and destroyers of 1866 firepower. Invasion has 3 transports carrying 11 infantry and 3 armor (756 strength).

2154.11.26 Annoying choices. A libiya mining base is attacked just as Battle 2 drive past headig for Atuuko. It is a lone dagger 12 ship fleet. We decide to press on with our offensive action, and leave the rebuilding of lost mines to the constructors.

We stop reporting trivial tech, like marsh colonization complete just now. Research has been forgotten in the past as well. We do register that it is more important to have both Fusion and Quantum reactor compared to some larger build sizes. Idiots...

2155.02.28 As battle 2 land at the star, it spots a few grim claw ships around the dual spaceports. There is no activity at the pirate owned colony that still has 1 atuuk troop defending. Invasion is told to attack the colony as battle 2 wait for company at the star.

Not being very distracted, we order the first 14 destroyers and frigates for a new Battle 3. Money is still flowing in.



2155.03.05 Annoying graviton beams are spotted as battle 2 is met by the local ships.



They ships are eager to jump at the dual spaceports, some are wrapping up the last pirate ship at the star. We notice that one spaceport is rather weak, with half the power of the other. And the weaker one has just 240 shields as well.



It is not easy to see what happens in detail, but it is no doubt they charge into battle with some attitude. Not all of our ships are in the image. There is or was probably a pirate consruction ship in there as well.

The spaceports die, so do a lot of pirate ships, it appears that at least one of them may have jumped away to warn its friends. The colony is captured by the time we pay attention.

Battle 2 misses one ship when they gather after the battle. 4 are damaged. The damaged are told to repair, the rest stays in the system. Repair is at the capital, a good distance away.



There are structures to remove. They are the same kind on whiny atuuks that we encountered after conquering sipan. Early revenue is 88k, tax 1%.



No reason to waste time clearing away pirate presence. It looks like our forces should manage the job. The invasion fleet has left to nearest spaceport. At the same time we queue gas mines on both gas giants, one with both fuels, one with hydrogen.

We garrison 5 infantry at beate, and tell invasion to load troops. They fleet members go separate ways, two back to beate.

We buy some destroyers for battle 3, and one destroyer for invasion fleet. The destroyer becomes fleet leader, and will work as a meeting point for transports on various missions.

Cashflow is a scary low 58K, it is good that we have another atuuk colony that soon will bring good income ;-)

2155.07.18 We spot a Grim Guild construction ship near the capital. Battle 1 (with the capital ship) launches to welcome it to our territory. They started at Dhayu, but with Home Fleet at Dhayu they will probably continue to Arexie when done. A sinister spaceways construction ship has started a base in our new territory. Most of battle 2 will test if speed and firepower has become good enough will be enough to kill the construction ship (we drag and select because 4 ships are heading home for repairs, and should continue with that).

We even spot a second grim guild construction ship, but that is left alone for now.

2155.11.15 A lone dagger raiding fleet, discovered that it is not a good idea to try raid the colony below the 845 firepower spaceport at Sipan 4. The ships were in another part of the system, and had no chance to get there in time to join in on the kills. They arrived in time for one to be scratched by railguns, though. But Sipan is a nice place to be, it has lots of shipyards to repair in.



2155.08.01 The defensive prowess of home fleet is tested as the lone daggers arrive at Dhayu 3. They can not stop the raid, they kill a few, lose one, and most are damaged. Have I mentioned that I hate pirate railguns? Home for repairs.

The battle 2 ships did not manage to kill their constructors, but they killed the spaceport build. A pirate escort did not impress the large spaceport at Sipan 4, at least considering its aproach along the gunports of the defensive base. Battle 1 will manage to kill its construction ship.

We have researched impact blaster, and the new firepower of frigates/destroyers is improved from 42/102 to 84/114. Spaceports and defensive bases are retrofitted first.

The lone daggers learned that sapila 4 got a large spaceport now, compared to the good old independent days. Their 12-ish size rainding fleet die to the spaceport and defensive base, but manage to scratch 2 fleet members.

There is an internal discussion about who are more annoying. the Grim Guild that usually attack one mine in the north (when rebuilt), or the lone daggers that try to raid our colonies, and bust all kinds of mines.

It is an easy victory for the annoying, rail gun wielding, lone daggers.

It is 2156.01.30, pirates are still annoying, and it may be time for a proper fightback, at least as long as we don't spot another high quality and high population independent.

Status

As a general AAR consideration, I should try move to a bit higer level in writing, but it is hard when mines at home are still frequently attacked. Not that we often do anything about those attacks apart from hoping that automated constructors will rebuild them.

Getting "here" took longer than expected, and with "here" I think of having more than one fleet that can inflict some pain. The Dhayut were not that good starters, and there is a lot of nearby pirate groups. The amount of pirates were increased when setting up the game, though.

I should not have grabbed the two colonies early on...

I guess it could be a good moment to review various states of the empire.

Pirates

Still annoying, but not as overpowering. The action to push away the guys who's small spaceport was to our left was a success. We have not seen them since.

The local gang, the Najarca Council still exists as well. The diplomacy screen show them with 2 bases, 5 colonies, 45 ships, and 5160 firepower. We have not been bothered by them, nor seen them, since busting their starting spaceport, apart from any ship met immediately after that. We can assume that any pirate sufficiantly far from all of our colonies (and mines) is not a problem. I am not too stressed about mines "far away" anyways, I am not going going to put a 30 ship fleet to defend a mine in the middle of nowhere unless it mines something very special. And the lone daggers, at least, do attack mines with 10-12 ship fleets which makes a 4 ship defensive fleet rather pointless.

I feel that there are more pirate attacks on mines. This could be because pirates consider the colonies too strong targets, and start focusing here instead.

Expansion

If we want to, we can colonize deserts, continentals, and marshes. We got some decent targets within the empire, but we are still prone to pirate raids, and the only full colonies are populated with atuuk. Our guys can breed on the colonies they got as long as there is plenty of room there. Every new colony is still a potential problem, as getting credits and tech stolen in raids is not fun.

When pirates stop roaming the empire, we can put down some colonies. But there is no point for instance colonizing the decent prospect in the capital system, and having the capital population move there until the capital is full. Remember, population is key to high colony revenue, which is what we tax.

Better targets than new colonies are some independents that are still around, although not many, if any, are even near the quality and population of our two atuuk colonies.

Ships and bases

Numbers are growing fast, but I am not happy with fleets of frigates and destroyers. The AI is stupid in research, and we can't even build any carrier (or we could build one, but it lacks fighter bays which makes it kind of stupid).

We have only 3 exploration ships, but they are sitting idle since they don't believe they have more to explore. I am not so sure I believe ther is nothing more, there could be resources and ruins out there. In any case there is no need to build more unless I want some scouts in case of war. But like the trip I did to the Atuuko system to check out the defenses, any military ship can do that. It would annoy an empire, though, in which case an exploration ship would be better. However, I do not usually scout that much until war starts anyways.

The alien capital ship is still powerful, and it has hyperdeny that helps in killing construction ship. But it is slow. It has the Kaldos drive with 7 second to jump and a speed of 13750. The rest has our racial drive. 6 seconds to jump and a speed of 23500. The racial drive is very good at this point in time, giving the various benefits of all of the normal drives. Fast jump, high speed, low energy usage.

Special consideration

Our best colony is Atuuk. Soon our second atuuk colony, Beate, will become very profitable as well. It is short on development, and need some freighter service to build a store of luxuries and strategic resources. Freighters will take care of that over time, just like they did with Sipan 4. Beate got 4 more quality, Sipan 4 got 4000M more population and a +15 development bonus from a ruin. I guess Sipan will be better, but both will outshine the capital until it reaches the same population level.

It may be a very bad idea to go to war with the Atuuk empire, at least until we got more good colonies. Who knows how angry these furry beings can be? Less tax income for sure, and maybe even revolts (and leaving the empire) would be possible outcomes.

Corruption is an issue, if not for that Sipan 4 would bring even more money. Regional capitals in areas with many good colonies is helpful. On a single good colony all by itself, not that helpful. But facility building is automated, anyways.

Spaceports

I will try to limit their number to try help the resource situation. I will probably build defensive bases on top of colonies with no spaceport. A colony like Sipan 4 do benefit from the protection that a large spaceport provides, though.

Today my large spaceport design has 1140 firepower and 7020 shields. The defensive base design with 648 firepower and 2880 shields is way weaker. But none of them will stop a proper fleet attack in the later game on its own. The LSP would deal damage for a longer time, though.

It can be a good idea to have a custom cheap base and/or defensive base with the medical and recreational (and some docking bays and commerce center) to boost the colonies with no spaceport. In this game that is not an issue yet, as the dimwits has not researched neither medical nor recreation. I am not sure what I will do when they finally make them available.


The screens




Not a local area map this time. If in doubt, we are the red guys in the upper left part. We have 5 fleets and 5 colonies, the two "northern colonies" have a fleet each. Known pirate bases are highlighted. We can see a lot of them around Sipan (the top right system of ours). And pirates live close to our home area, and those bases are the sources of our annoying pirates there. Not all of the bases nearby are owned by pirates that has caused any serious grief, yet.



We used to be poor an miserable like a lot of the other empires. Then we grabbed an atuuk independent nearby that none of the local powers had managed to grab. Then we grabbed another one. They could be a problem in their own way, as that "power bar" looks kind of favorable.

When it comes to this game, I am not that fond of independents due to things like these. But I added them in this one to help the pirates in the early game.



Beate has very low development, and it still outshines our two "oldies". Arexie is not shabby at all, with 26k tax income it can pay for its own defenses and then some. Dhayu 3 is more questionable with 12k income, but it is not awful, and can easily pay for a defensive base on top and some protective ships. And both should have lots of free space for growth.

We noticed the mortalen were unhappy about us enslaving some of their people. If they don't like slavery, why do they move to our colonies? Dhayu 3 and Arexie both have small populations of Mortalen and Naxxilians, and Arexie has a few Atuuk as well. They add to the workforce :)



Much more military ships, maybe build some more troop transports? And recruit some troops to fill them with? And some troops for defense? Crazy number of ships are needed when we can only build small things of 300 size or less.

2 defensive bases for the capital and sipan 4. Mine count is up, the 3 extra construction ships have contributed to that, but pirates are still annoying.

About design, it can be mentioned that I have not checked what fuel my fleets use. Probably hydrogen? They are researching the quantum reactor, and may switch between them. They are also researching the second blaster type, and may switch between long and short range blasters that will make the ship firepower go up and down between versions.




Once we were poor, and we built new frigates whenever we got money. Now we are not so poor, and still build frigates and destroyers with all our money, but it is harder to keep up with the income.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 24
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/2/2014 3:44:36 PM   
Grotius


Posts: 5798
Joined: 10/18/2002
From: The Imperial Palace.
Status: offline 		Good reading. I liked your recent summary of the state of your empire. And I enjoy your carefully edited screenshots. Moar, please!

_____________________________


(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 25
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/2/2014 7:02:56 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		Thanks for the feedback, I am glad you enjoy it.

As for screenshots, I usually don't edit them at all, I have just added some yellow circles a very few times so far. I line up the game to show a travel vector if necessary. I zoom in far enough. Then I use the Snipping tool that is a part of Windows 7 to take screenshot of a region of the screen which is the image shown. If I am not happy I grab again rather than edit it.

I save screenshots in a separate folder for each post.

I type in a text editor, and when I make a screenshot I spam for instance

XXXXXXXX dhayuattack

And save the screenshot with something trying to be dhayuattack.

When "done" I paste the image tags from the forum on line above or below each of those lines. I then go to photobucket, make a new "album" for the part under my main album for the AAR, and drag the images there as a unit to upload. The album is sorted by time taken, and will always be in the same order as in the AAR as long as I have not edited them.

I then read through the text, catch some of the worst language errors (even if it may not look that way), and paste the image url and delete the XXXX lines as I pass them.

Paste to forum, use Chrome spell checker to catch some typos, check line wraps, done.

I find writing AARs like this a bit fun. It is a motivation to play a game, and it make me think a bit more through why I do stuff while doing it. And it creates a chance to enjoy the graphics a bit as I pause to screenshot during combat. Not so fun when a phase drags on as badly as the "into space" phase of pirate beating in this game, though. They took forever to get a halfway decent economy.

(in reply to Grotius)
Post #: 26
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/3/2014 9:30:28 AM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		It is not always easy to come up with a title

2156.01.30, we always continue where we left off.

Troop recruitment. We got money, lets build some. Dhayu 3 and Arexie are nice and Dhayut dominated, they build normal Dhayut troops, 6 each for now. The capital has armored and special capabilities. It builds 5 armor and 2 special forces. The amounts are somewhat random.

Having 3 transports, we order a random 6 more. We use the rest of our money on destroyers, and will probably not build a frigate ever again. We can afford 8 destroyers.

A bit tired of frigates trying to catch up to their fleets while at low shields, new destroyers are added in a new fleet. This is renamed Construction, based at the capital, and will be automated. Postures will be defense and colony only. Hopefully this will bring them to the capital, and it will not show initiative. Care must be taken to never empty this fleet, or settings will have to be redone as the fleet is disbanded. Doing so should also ensure that fleet leader is in the capital system at all times, and he is the guy the others wants to move to. The plan is of course to replenish fleets with ships from the construction fleet.

Before this order we notice 6 free shipyards at Sipan 4, and 1 ship in queue at the capital. It is worth paying a bit attention to build queues, and a possible need for a third spaceport. Currently there is not a real good candidate for that, since they are all quite close to existing spaceports, and the best colony without on is Beate at the map edge.

2156.02.07 Battle 2 members at atuuko complain about fuel, the curse of a new colony. We have queued fuel mines in the system, though. We really need to get some cruisers that ought to have longer range. I target the lowest fuel fleet members, and give refuel order until one does not choose Beate as its target. That one I stop and wait...

I try to keep Battle 1, 3 and Home fleet at the colony systems "at home", and in a refueled state. I send one transport with 5 normal troops to beate to up the garrison there to 10 troops. This colony is valuable.

2156.03.16 retrofit order for battle 1. That is also something to do after getting new blasters.

2156.03.28 The lone daggers arrive again to raid Dhayu 3. The system only has a hyperdrive less member of battle 2. Their raid will be repelled on the ground. Home Fleet is on its way, but in need of a retrofit like the other fleets.

Sipan Fleet tries to retrofit at Sipan. A rather "fresh" colony of ours will for sure not have any issue building impact assualt blasters for 33 ships? We hope...

2156.06.05 A raid successful at Dhayu? We notice Home fleet in battle with the lone daggers in the system after watching battle 2 kill a lone Grim Guild cruiser at Beate. It was a fleet leader and alone, looking very alien.

Home fleet takes a beating to the nasty railguns, and almost all ships are damaged as they are recalled with the pirates still in the system. 2 ships are missing.

24 waiting for construction at the capital spaceport, retrofitting battle 1 could take a while. And home fleet is incoming for repairs, also needing a retrofit.

2156.07.27 We spot a lone dagger construction ship, possibly there to repair a captured mine, in the libiya system near the capital. We send battle 1 which has retrofit order. The capital ship is not retrofitting, some are done, and others maybe not yet "in the yards" as there is a queue for shipyard attention.

The ships for construction fleet are finished, and this should make retrofits and repairs flow quicker at the capital. Only 4 yards were doing repairs and retrofits while they were being built.

2156.08.21 We are happy to see the capital ship land with the construction ship well inside the hyperdeny field. The 5 frigates with it (that were done retrofitting?) circle it nicely. A sure kill.

2156.09.23 A najarca council frigate attacks the gas mine in Montu Kudro system. Battle 3 waits at the colony, and will go for it. This the first we have noticed about them since busting their base. The only base of theirs we can see is too far to be the source of this ship, so where did this one start from? The mine is at half shields when the frigate is wasted by battle 3.

We watch for automated troop ships heading for Dhayu, that is not safe territory. We stop them and add them to invasion. It is a pain to manage troops when the systems recruiting them are not safe to visit.

As Home Fleet is repaired, we order them to retrofit. This swallows all the 20k cash at the time, so we may not retrofit all due to low cash reserves.

2156.12.07 Battle 1 is done with retrofit, and heads for Dhayu start to make the system safe until the next batch of railgun fire.

Battle 1 clears the Dhayu system with 6 damaged. Damaged ships sent to repair, the rest stays. Ships in the home system destroy lone daggers attacking the a newly rebuilt mining station.

Battle 3 retrofits, and the only left to do so is battle 2 at Atuuko.

Strikeback



Sipan fleet is strong at 33 retrofitted ships. It takes attack order of one of two savage sun spaceports (both small) in a system outside Sipan.

At arrival, a few local ships are battling a strike force of the Grand Atuuk Territory.



The only exciting part of the outcome is if there will be losses for the Sipan fleet. As the spaceport dies, 2 are damaged. The fleet is immediately told to attack the other small spaceport in the system.

If you want an action photo, it is OK to reuse the one above. There are only so many ways the same fleet attacking identical small spaceports can look.



As the second spaceport explodes, we get a lost ship location. Wait? What? In the sollost system? That is where our capital is, we thought we had that one explored, but obviously missed an anomaly.

We immediately get control. 208 firepower, a slow moving boat -> retire for tech. Some fleet stuff that can come in handy is not enough reason to keep it.

Sipan fleet has about 15 damaged, I guess it would not have hurt to recharge shields before the second attack. It gets repair order. Three ships are too badly damaged to flee home. We drop them from fleet, and allow them to stay and maybe pick up a repair from a construction ship. They will also function as scouts in the system.

(Much later all of the three will actually rejoin Sipan fleet).

As Home Fleet helps in defeating a small Najarcan fleet that attacked a home system mine, Home Fleet is no more. They all join battle 1. Battle 1 is renamed Crusher 1 to show that it is a stronger fleet than the average battle fleet.

While not planning to do anything about the question, we wonder "Where is that Najarcan base?". There are bigger fish to fry.



Crusher 1 with 46 ships is told to move to the system of the "lone dagger capital", a former mortalen colony. The main purpose of the move is to meet up with the former home fleet starting from the capital.

Never mind that lone dagger fleet attacking a mine just NW of the capital in the Libiya system, we don't do anything about such attacks... As Crusher 1 members land, they find that the colony has a medium spaceport, and a couple of ships present. This is a bad place to hang around if you want to save ships for the main spaceport attack, so they jump further "back" to meet up in the Jintawoe system where the original Najarcan spaceport was.

A Najarcan capital ship (alien) attack our gas mine in Montu Kudro. There is no fleet present, but we take note that they attack in the north of the home areas, which may be a hint that that is the general area of the base. Contrary to being based to the south of our empire.

Crusher 1 finds one lone dagger escort in Jintawoe, and nothing else. It manages to damage a destroyer before it dies...



When all ships are present, Crusher 1 heads for the star of the system with the large lone dagger spaceport. The two flags below that shows the other two known spaceports of them, but those are both small. Rumors tell us about a large spaceport with 948 firepower and 7200 shields.

2157.11.18. The lone daggers attack Dhayu 3 as Battle 3 head for arexie. The lone dagger may not be as eager in raiding quite soon.

2157.12.02. We got Quantum engines, and we are researching larger shipyards. Celebration! It may not be enough for decent cruisers, but it may add more stuff to destroyers, and maybe open up for a proper carrier build.

We approve a suggested defensive base at Beate. We have already started one on top of the colony which still lacks some components. Beate is improving, now contributing with 36k tax revenue.

Arriving in the pirate system, Crusher 1 finds maybe 15-20 ships, some at spaceport and some at random spots, and no other structures. They attack the spaceport before any pirate can damage them.



As they jump at the spaceport, those at the spaceport jump to the star where Crusher 1 just left. It gives a brief moment to engage the spaceport alone.



The frigates dive into battle, and the spaceport sends out fingers of green graviton beams. The spaceport shields go down fast to the 5444 firepower of the Crusher 1 fleet.



As the frigates has charged past the spaceport, and are ready for a new turn, the spaceport is already badly damaged.



As the spaceport has blown, a few attackers being near the center of the explosion did not quite manage to shrug off the blast. The rest of the fleet battle out with the few pirate ships still alive.

As the final pirate ship present is destroyed, most ships of crusher 1 are damaged, and the fleet returns for deserved repair. As they leave, the fleet has 43 ships moving home. A couple of those in the shot above are actually flying, only 1 ship is left in the system. It is the westfalen IV 019, an experienced ship with no less than two officers. Frigates lose their position in the military, and a star frigate has been badly beaten and will be lost.

As the 43 more or less working members of Crusher 1 heads back they can be satisfied with doing a major blow to the most annoying pirate clan. It is, however, no reason to believe that these guys are a spent force.



2158.04.28 At the same time, Sipan fleet with 30 working and retrofitted ships lifts off to bust the main Savage Sun Ventures spaceport near the colony. It shows a much more modest 4800 shields and 588 firepower compared to the spaceport just killed by Crusher 1.

As usual, they target the star, to get a view of the ships in the system before committing to the spaceport. The image also shows that there are more targets to be had.

In other news, Construction fleet was down at 1 ship after replenishing fleets, and does currently have 21 destroyers where 6 are under construction. They help with any pirate appearing in the capital system. New builds are probably not ordered for a wile, as a cash buffer is nice when the new construction size is available.

2158.05.17: As sipan fleet and its 30 ships land at the star of their pirate system, they spot only 3 pirate ships in the system, including at least one badly damaged one. They head for the pirate base where there is a host of civilian "independents".



We can see the shields of the spaceport flash as the first salvos hit it. The leading frigate is seen with its shield flashing as 2/3 of it is removed in an instant as the spaceport fires.



We will never tire of the sound and looks of large pirate spaceports exploding.



Rumors among frigate crews say that right besides the spaceport is the wrong place to be as it explodes. 8 ships lack hyperdrive, 1 ship is lost. None of them fire as a lone pirate frigate appears and wonder where the spaceport is. We scrap them all.

We register the sipan fleet at 18 ships as we wonder how 30 - 1 -8 became 18. Does anomalies not only gift ships but take them away too? Two recovered frigates from their first battle are repaired by a constructor and rejoins, while 1 damaged ship remains in that system for now.

2158.08.05 Not bothered by the loss of their main spaceport, the lone daggers arrive to raid Dhayu 3. There are no defending ships in the system. Battle 3 is at Arexie, Construction is in the capital system, and crusher 1 is not yet home for repairs. The last ships are slow in getting back due to their fuel cells being damaged having caused them to run out of fuel.

As Dhayu 3 battle raiders, we notice that it has reached max population at 4800M. That is one of issues with low quality worlds (65%).

2158.11.24 Battle 2 left Atuuko on a construction ship hunt of unknown success, and heads for retrofit at the capital. Two defensive bases protect Beate, and will hopefully manage just fine.

We are reluctant to build defensive bases at Dhayu 3 and Arexie since we doubt they would survive a pirate attack without fleet help anyways. And we are not stuffed with fleets to sit around protecting a build.

2158.12.11 The ship waiting for repair NW of sipan observes a Grim guild construction ship arriving to build a mine. Some 17 complete ships of Sipan fleet takes off to kill it while the straggles are being repaired.



Sipan fleet manages a good encirclement as they arrive, but we believe the Construction ship escaped after taking some damage with shields down. A good try, but a failure.



2159.01.22 There are several battles in the capital system as lone daggers attack mining bases. As can be seen, there is a good number of Construction and Crusher 1 ships to battle out with them. Some of our ships will require repair after such battles due to rail guns, and many pirates are killed. Often we will notice military ships in the dead space around the capital system, a sure sign that the lone daggers have arrived and are damaging ships, making them flee.

With 95k at hand, +101K cashflow, and component prefabrication at 33%, we decide there is enough time to rebuild a stash, and buy 17 destroyers for almost all of the money.

As the new orders are added to construction fleet, all but the leader is assigned to new fleets. 2 to fill battle 3 to 23 ships, about 6 to crusher 1, the rest increases Sipan fleet to 33 ships. There are more pirate spaceports around Sipan.

Fleets with new ships are told to refuel, then queued to move to the colony. That should make them stay in the gravity well of the colony or base. If not, they tend to "park in space" after refueling while the colony/base leaves on their eternal orbits around the stars.



2159.03.02 Grim guild arrives at the gas mine of Sipan 7 lead by a large alien capital ship. It is powerful at 458 firepower. Sipan fleet is repairing, with 4 damaged ships, and is told to attack the capital.

Not too many are ready to go, but our ships are stronger than at the start of the game, and these capital ships lose their power over time. The attackers die, and sipan fleet loses none. Back to refuel and repair duty. The mine? It had 4 damaged components.



At the same time the Grim Guild visit beate. We can see a lack of focus on their part, and their closest ship taking heavy damage in a volley from the defensive base on top of the colony. The two closest ships are killed, the defensive bases not impressed, and the civilan ships are damaged, fleeing, and possibly killed.

2159.04.03 Holographic network wonder for the Securan Harmony. We have not even discovered recreational centers. We fight pirates, we don't focus on entertainment. Or something. Lots of setbacks in the giant colonization project "way back" does not help our high tech progress at all.

Another alien cruiser appears in the capital system. Another one with 208 firepower and no hyperdeny is sent to retire.

Lots of damaged ships in the capital system after fighting lone daggers. But at least they don't need hyperdrive to limp back for repairs. It is hard to get a fully repaired crusher 1 when this happens. Very damaged ships are transferred to construction.

At Sipan, the fleet waits for its additions to arrive. They also fight mine attackers and manage to capture a couple to retire for tech benefits.



2159.10.12 Sipan Fleet with 30 working ships and 3486 firepower launches after a failed pirate constructor hunt, and heads for the star of the system where the main base of the Grim Guild can be found. We know of 3 additional spaceports of theirs.



At the same time, Crusher 1 finds itself with 46 working ships, and is told to attack the Grim Guild controlled colony near home, where we saw a medium spaceport. They have no troops, and the target is the spaceport we believe is there. We can see their two known spaceport bases on the right. A similar symbol at the bottom is a different clan that has not bothered us.

Sipan Fleet finds only 3 armed ships and a couple of unarmed transports to accompany the Large Grim Guild Spaceport.



The frigate tactic of speedily charging in on large spaceports is not always good for their health. But what can they do with only short range weapons? The spaceport is powerful.



Shots fly around the spaceport which pummels one of our destroyers in the upper right. Another destroyer at the end of the red beam down right is also feeling the pain. The spaceport is soon shields down.



At the same time Crusher 1 circles the lone claw spaceport, and discovers that their expected medium target has become large since last time. It hardly matters, it got to go.


The Grim Guild spaceport is down as Crusher 1 pummels their objective.

Sipan Fleet has 25 ships heading for repair, half of them undamaged. 3 are left behind having no hyperdrive and having issues with a pirate present, they are scrapped.

At crusher 1, hardly any ship escapes damage. The Lone Dagger spaceports go out with a bang.



11 ships find themselves with no hyperdrive. In addition 6 ships are gone. Lets hope they won't retrofit to another large spaceport by the time we have an attack force ready.

At the same time the sinister spaceways of the south attack a mine near home. They have build a large spaceport nearby, and have at least one more large spaceport further south. So many pirates...

We need more ships to replace losses. Component prefabrication is at 62% and there is time to gather even more cash before it is done. Currently we are at 221k, and need to reinforce both Sipan and Crusher fleets. 10 destroyers are built at Sipan to reinforce the local fleet. They are added to a temporary fleet.

Afterwards we build 25 more at the build order screen, and add them to Construction to end up at the capital. Good timing in building helps when organizing fleets. First 10 sipan ships, sort by fleet. Add fleetless ships to the sipan temporary fleet. Then build the ones for Construction Fleet and add them the same way. If there are a host of non-fleeted ships this will not work, but sorting by firepower could work. But in this case both new sets had 0 firepower since the builds had not started.

Invasion has been moved to an "empty" system near home to avoid dragging itself into battles at the capital. We are tired of repairing them, and don't want to lose any loaded troops due to stupid ships trying to fight pirates. One reason to never have weapons on transports if doing manual designs.



2160.02.10 Battle 2, the former Atuuko guys, launches its 23 retrofitted ships from the capital. It aims for the lower of two lone dagger small spaceports, aiming for the star, of course.

We can see invasion camping in an empty system. Crusher 1 working its way back. And above the Crusher 1 marker, all by itself is a star system. In it there is a frequently visited place from earlier in the game, when pirates (and we) built there again, and again. Now it is lone dagger controlled and have been so for a while. A single destroyer of the Construction fleet leaves the capital to that star. We hope to catch it as it lands, before it heads back to fleet leader. The aim is to intercept it to give order to kill that mine. We know it is there due to the way system overview works, but we can't target it.

Another destroyer from Construction launches at pantulemen star where we just killed the pirate colony spaceport. Just to check if they are building another one. It will go home after landing, and we need to watch this one as well not to miss the news. Luckily both destroyers have a shorter trip than Battle 2.

2160.02.27 The securan harmony terminate the trade in loros fruit. How could they?! We can always fetch it by other means if we really want to... Or maybe go for the spice source, that one is in the small system to the right of Sipan, controlled by the dark blue securans (secura utopia).

1.6K stored loros, 2,3k in transit... Our cashflow will take a hit from its current 123K when that runs out. We should survive a small drop ;-) The only thing we lack is a lot of cash, which is because we have not been rich for a long time. And because we may lose 16 destroyers at once busting a spaceport, which will cost 85k to replace at this point in time.

The destroyer on a mine hunt is ordered to kill the mine. The one scouting the pirate system finds 3 ships and no structures. And Battle 2 is half way. At this time we spot a lone dagger construction ship in jintawoe. It is the system to the left of the pirate colony just visited.

We tell the damaged capital ship in battle 1, now just arrived at the capital system, to attack it. We are on standby for some ships to help out, but they are faster so care must be taken to have the capital ship place its hyperdeny field before anyone else arrive. Some fleet members may follow it, since a few actually are healthy.

Problems? The blasted pirate mine of lone daggers has graviton weapons, it takes out the hyperdrive of the attacking destroyer. Another Construction fleet member is moved in to kill as the damaged ship leaves the fleet.



A bit distracted watching a destroyer flee from a pirate mine, we fail to notice the battle 2 landing as it happens, but they find a lot of pirate ships, take the usual damage from graviton beams (no more railguns?), and heads home for repair. They can't battle those and the spaceport. There are several mines, a construction ship, and the small spaceport in the system. All members of Battle 2 will make it back home.

The capital ship manages to land and finds the constructor, as it does, a few healthy of its fleet members are told to attack the constructor too.

The constructor is scary fast. Battle 2 is maybe closer on its retreat? Battle 2 is told to attack the constructor.

2160.07.15 And while this happens, the lone daggers try to raid Dhayu 3. We have no protection apart from some 12 troops on ground.



Battle 2 arrives, but they land far back. But the ship between the capital and the constructor (a bit hard to see ahead of it) is a speedy frigate at 35 speed. The capital almost keeps up at 20 speed.

Of course the frigates take damage killing it helped by a mate. What would lone daggers be if they did not arm their constructor with graviton beams? Battle 1 and 2 has renewed orders to repair.

Dhayu 3: Repel some, lose long range lasers to others. Yes, dear lone daggers, please equip long range lasers on all ships ans bases...

2160.09.16 Long range scanner research started, starting at 40% after, we think, some spy missions. They are nice. They could reveal pirate travel lines, and give enough warning to move fleets to intercept raids.

We have the capital ship leave Crusher 1 and join Construction. It is on constructor hunt standby, and is too slow to fly around with our speedy guys. Our superior hyperdrives can make the attacks more efficient, and we pack a punch without it.

17 destroyers of construction joins Crusher 1, bumping its numbers to 45 ships. Some need repair still. We make sure that all added are in the Sollost system, and the ship list is always used for this kind of work.

Just when you think a fleet is ready to leave the capital, a lone dagger has dropped by and scratched one of them...

2161.03.19 We noticed the influence circle around Beate increasing. Checking... Yes, 463K revenue, 27% tax, 115k tax income. Better than the capital in both revenue and tax collected. Casflow? +149k, 252k cash on hand. 97% progress on construction size...



2161.04.26 A repeat image? No. This is Crusher 1 and Battle 2 both moving to the system that battle 2 visisted alone. We can move them as two fleets since the slow capital ship is not here, and they have the same hyperspace speed. This is 23+45 ships on the move.




2151.05.04 Sipan fleet is repaired, strengthened to 35 ships, and take off towards a dual small spaceport system of the Grim Guild further west. They could have gone for the one to the south, but we can see a grim guild ship attacking a mine near the target, and they have had activity in that area. Killing both spaceports on the same trips may be over the top, time will show. Battle 3 sits at Beate at the left, doing some work to protect the 3 mines in the system as well as the colony.

2161.06.09 We have researched component prefabrication.

And with this, with fleets on attack vector, but some distance to their targets. With brand new designs, and with 258K cash on hand, it is a good time for a status.

We are using inadequate ships killing pirates with booby trapped bases, and it is a chore.

Status

A long post, but the focus became to "get to that construction tech".

Discussion of new designs will be at the start of the next part.

The last two research projects feel fast. Long range scanners are closing on completion, but the previous project (Advanced Passenger Transport) was twice as expensive.

Component prefabrication felt fast too, but probably only because we waited forever for it to get started. Of course they move on to refined hyperjump theory, which we will not benefit from. This is a dhayut tech focus in research (in empire policy), but it is only used in capital ship designs. I have reported this as a bug/bad feature.

When it comes to fighting, we really miss repair bots, but they are a long way into the future as they are hidden deep in the damage control/construction branch. On manual research I would have given it a very high priority in energy research. The AI has spent time on useful stuff like 3 different engine types to choose from. And 2 shields. And 2 reactors. Those research projects will eventually be necessary to reach the "end game" technologies, but doing it now is a waste of research effort, when there is little research effort to spare.

We got fleets that can kill the pirate bases, but they take a beating while doing so. Maybe the Sipan fleet should have stayed smaller and inactive, and ships rather spent to create a second Crusher fleet in the south. Grim Guild has been annoying, but not anywhere near the lone dagger level.

No statistics, but I think colony raids are less frequent, and only dhayu now for quite some time, and the lone daggers are behind it.

The Lone Dagger colony that we have visited has 1738M population of some growth, 61% quality. It is not much income, and right now, just another place to get raids and to garrison a decent set of troops. And how much could the Lone daggers really benefit from controlling such a colony?

Screens:



Yellow dots are pirate bases. The most annoying ones are currently awaiting our fleets arriving. The one quite near our red, on the left edge, is a large spaceport at a colony system that I think spawned 1 small mine attack near the capital. It is a group "from the south", the next two bases below are the same crew.

The "cross" was randomly placed, SE of it is the loros source. SW in the blue colony is the spice source. We still got the loros bonus as will be seen in the 135 colony development levels. The fluid source is far to the east, a single light brown Haakonish circle below the big Haakonish capital circle.

There are lots of wars going on, but no one declare war on me, I am not paying much attention to anything but my pirate battles. And being busy fighting pirates, war is not on my mind.



We are doing well, but are not dominant in anything but population. Top 4 in military power, for instance. Shared first in economy. The economy came easy due to the atuuk independents.

Getting some defense pacts could be a way to get dragged into wars. The sluken would be obvious choices for that. In other matters, Securan Harmony is a weird empire to be on friendly terms with, having way of the ancients and all. They are mightily impressed by our noble reputation gained by defending against pirates. Everyone has high reputations, lots of pirates... Several empires are "heroic".



This makes me feel like a proper colonial power. Exploiting the Atuuk natives, and building our fortunes on them.

The capital is getting better and more populated, Dhayu 3 is at maximum population. Arexie is a nice addition when not being raided.




2 more defensive bases, both at beate.
A good increase in mine count, but they are still attacked.
The last frigate has probably been built, but even if we start building cruisers, the destroyers and frigates can do some duty bashing pirates and stuff. And the destroyers are not useless at all.

6 research stations? We now have a bonus site for each, and the 3 at the capital. Research potential is up to 1050K. Research capacity is 3*400, and not way more than needed. For research, a large spaceport at the next big gain in population would fit nicely.

Research bonuses? Component prefab that was just completed spawned a genius with 20% empire bonus to research. Too bad they put it at a research station at a bonus location, but it is one that has lived for a long time. His only bonus apart from that is hightech, and he is on the energy bonus location. Weird.
In addition, we have 10% high tech from leader.
16% weapons, 25% energy, 20% hightech from sites.



We should not run maintenance way up as we got a loros fruit deal that expired, but we could not build enough even if we wanted to. Ships do not come for free. And we do not need _that_ many troops at this time.

We will of course eventually catch up unless we are so rich we got all the ship we bother to buy. But right now the need is like 40 ships in systems with a colony, 20 in systems with a mine, and a few 50 ship attack fleets...

Resort income?! We got no resort base, and I have not noticed any in any attack message either. And 18K is not a trivial amount on a base that was there for a short moment. Odd.

< Message edited by Bingeling -- 6/3/2014 6:36:07 PM >

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 27
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/3/2014 7:44:50 PM   
Bingeling

 

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline 		This game was a bit of a chore for a while, now it is really fun :)

Planning

New designs have arrived. Are the cruisers useful at this time?

Carriers are available with 5 fighter bays. They are slow (13 cruise), got point defense, and 2 wasted impact assault blasters. We have missed fighters for ages, we want them.

The frigates are the same as before, they were below the old maximum size at 247. 85 firepower, 29 cruise, 62 sprint. Speedy, and with impact assault blasters. The short range blasters do not help their survival against spaceports, especially the large ones that go out with a big explosion.

Destroyers have gained 34 or 35 size, and have maybe slowed down due to gaining heavy stuff? They need to be compared with the cruisers that for sure want to be larger than they currently are.

Destroyer:
156 firepower. 2 torpedoes are longest range if "standoff" at stronger targets.
540 shields
20 armor
19 cruise, 41 sprint.
8.03 sectors range.

Cruiser:
204 firepower. 4 torpedoes with longest range.
900 shields
19 armor
14 cruise, 30 sprint
13.07 sectors range

None of them are brilliant at chasing down targets, but fighters from carriers are. The cruiser works well for attacking spaceports and sitting at colonies in defense where speed is not so important. The cruiser has better range. And they will be better in the future as we get another build size upgrade or two, while destroyers are at their end game configuration.

With better shields, more torpedoes, and more range, the cruiser is a winner even if a bit slower. For quick response the destroyer is better, but the frigate should help out.

Fleet structure

I prefer to have 3 types of fighting fleets, and separate fleets for transports.

Battle fleets are the main fighters. They attack fleets, defend colonies, bust small and possible medium spaceports. A size like 14 cruisers and 4 carriers could be suitable for now.

Raider fleets are good at busting mines and protecting against enemy strike fleets. And good at intercepting weak pirates looking for a mine kill. Frigates and destroyers, but a carrier and a couple of cruisers could also be used. Maybe 3 frigates and 2 destroyers or something like that? Increase fleet sizes if they fail to do their job.

Crusher fleets are beefed up battle fleets with a different name. They kill things that hurt more. Like large spaceports with defensive bases. 25 cruisers and 6 carriers, maybe?

It is of course possible to use two battle fleets instead of a crusher fleet, just like Crusher 1 and Battle 2 are now both heading for a pirate system.

Shopping

We have 259K credits.

4 carriers for battle 3
4 carriers for battle 2
6 carriers for crusher 1
6 carriers for Sipan Fleet, as it is almost a crusher.

that is 20 carriers in total which is booked. It costs just short of 149k, leaving 110k. I use the build order screen to have the AI split the build on the two spaceports.

I first make sure that 6 carriers built at Sipan joins Sipan fleet.
And that the last two sipan builds join battle 3 at atuuko with another two. And of course distribute the remaining.

It is not necessary to take that much care, but if bored it does not hurt. And we are not at "peace" now, we are fighting pirates, so extra travel across the empire is not ideal.

What can we get for 109K?

12 cruisers and 4 carriers for a new battle fleet. A bit low on cruisers, but it is a start. I make a new Battle 4, and make sure it is based at the capital and that the fleet leader is a cruiser being built at the capital spaceport. This should make sure that they move there, and stay there as long as I also change postures to defensive home base only.

I change names of battle 2 and 3 to Dest 2 and 3 to indicate that they are not "normal" battle fleets. "Dest" because "Destroyer" is too long for the ship list fleet select list.

After a big restructure and purchase like this it is a good idea to drop by the fleet screen to see that things are like expected. This time battle 3 was much larger than battle 2 and had also received the 6 carriers intended for sipan fleet. This is one reason why I like to have "fixed size" fleets, it is easy to spot errors when messing up assignments.

We have 29 ships in the Construction fleet, 28 should be destroyers. They help out in the capital system, and may reinforce other fleets when needed.

And the casflow is +145K, we will be able to buy more cruisers later.

When it comes to action, the plan is to bust the bases of annoying pirates, and this will require to take over the dagger colony near home. The other independent next door is poor quality but full of nice Dhayut, so we may grab that one as well to get clean borders and more Dhayut into the empire.

Action

2161.05.15 Not a moment has passed apart from enough to wake up the date field. All the above was done while paused.

Sipan Fleet is heading for a dual spaceport system (small spaceports) of the Grim Claw.
Dest 2 and Crusher 1 is heading for the system of a small lone dagger spaceport where dest 2 found a lot of ships present and fled when visiting alone.

There are of course no carriers on the move, they have just been ordered.

As Crusher 1 and Dest 2 arrive, they find the local defense forces busy fighting ships of the Sinister Invaders at a site that may have had a gas mine. There is the small spaceport, a gas mine, and possible something more hiding among the civilian ships in the system. The fleets launch at the small spaceport.

2161.08.24 As they circle the spaceport we are warned about an attack in the Sipan system on a gas mine. It is the Tefnyl Bandits, and we add them to the list of the "annoying". They have a base nearby, but their main presence is far south. We have no military presence apart from the colony defenses so the mines will have to fend for themselves.

Only shield damage taken at the spaceport attacked by Crusher 1 and Dest 2, more than 70 ships pack a punch. When they turn to the gas mining station it will be even more of a slaughter. Both fleets are queued to move to the other system with a small spaceport a short jump to the north.

Sipan fleet finds a system with 2 spaceports as expected, and some mining bases. Some ships are present. They warm up with queuing attacks on the two mining bases.



Crusher 1 and Dest 2 has had some ships damaged, but all fly towards the next system.



Sipan fleet is greeted by some of the hosts as they approach the first gas mine. It is about 12 ships defending.



Crusher 1 and Dest 2 both target a construction ship heading towards the spaceport. There are only a few ships present.

We are not sure what happened to the construction ship, but things will die. The fleets will hang around to mop up ships and mining stations at their own initiative.



Sipan fleet has downed one, and the defenders are outside the image above, we can see one beam, and a single ship in the lower right corner. The fleet is immediately ordered to attack the other spaceport.



The defenders desperately tries to protect their remaining spaceport in the system. It is of course a futile attempt. Sipan fleet stay for a while to fight anyone willing to fight, and to finish off at least one mine.

With lone dagger enemies bristling with graviton beams, Dest 2 and Crusher 1 has ships damaged, but they manage to wipe the ships and mines present. When the system is empty, they both get needed repair orders.

The sipan fleet is better off. They find themselves with one lightly, and one moderatly damaged as all identified enemies in the system are dead. They will also be told to repair at Sipan 4 spaceport (default is the capital).

The destruction triggers a star base (scrapped) and a capital ship in our dear Capital System. We are not fans of star bases at sites easily served by our own mines. Even if the pines are prone to pirate attacks.



It has the slow hyperdrive like the other capital, is not very strong, but it has hyperdeny and is kept because of that. We ponder whether to move it north to intercept construction ships in that area, but decide to wait and add it to construction fleet.

While fighting, news about long range scanners being researched arrived.

We retrofit the spaceports, notice a chunk of money, and order 18 cruisers to be put in the Construction Fleet for now.

2162.01.09. The Securan Harmony realize their errors, and agree to trade Loros Fruit with us again. We agree with our advisors and send the a gift of 1233 to reinforce the idea that they should trade goodies with us.

Shortly after, the first carriers are complete. A new built cruiser at Sipan charges the annoying pirates in the system with 28 shields charged, which earns it a trip to the shipyard for repairs. A good start for our new cruisers...

2162.04.14 Loros trade with the Haakonish too? Multiple sources never hurt.

2162.05.11 An attacked mine near Sipan is not newsworthy. The attackers being in a fleet called Phantom Fleet is. We believe it was the Lone Sun Marauders, who have known bases of the north, the black pirate flag, but only a few ships according to the diplomacy screen.

A lone dagger fleet attack a mine at Montu Kudro, a sizable fleet. We need to take care of their colony when we got ships ready for it. For now the Crusher 1 fleet is still heading for repairs, but in the capital system.

2162.08.26 With all ships repaired, and new carriers with about half shields, sipan fleet head out for the last known spaceport of the Grim Guild. This time they have direct attack order. Proper fleets should not need detailed orders to bust a small spaceport. The target site is south of Sipan.

37 Waiting at Sollost 2 Spaceport as it is building new ships, and having two large fleets in for repairs. It is building at full capacity, and it is all just bad timing from the military planner...

The new long scanner at Sipan 4 spaceport reveal the Tefnyl Hive on the prowl. We are not distracted much by pirate activity, focus is on busting bases and have them relocate out of range.



2162.10.24 no big surprises in store for the Sipan Fleet as they engage the pirate base. Some pirate ships are present, though. This is the first instance of combat for the carriers of the Combined Dhayut Alliance.




2162.11.16. With ships repaired, the 27 ships of Dest 2 moves to Pantulumen star, better stay a bit safe considering there may be a new spaceport on site. Invasion fleet moves to Jintawoe, the system to the left, to be both close and safe. It has 10 inf, 9 arm, 5 special forces, and has been idle for a long time loading troops has been a dangerous activity in Dhayu and Arexie.

Someone must remember to save all the planned screenshots... Picture them south of Sipan with attack order on the pirate system just SE of Sipan itself.

2162.11.27 Sipan fleet continue with attack order on a Tefnyl Bandits spaceport with a twist. There are two of them side by side.

The system also have a spaceport of a second clan, the Alzuk Authority who just now is bothering a mine at Sipan. And there is a pirate controlled colony of the Savage Storm League.



2163.01.05 Sipan fleet finds a few ships at the dual spaceports. Due to the dual spaceports, this could actually hurt a bit.



It is a bit of a mess. Shots, torpedoes, and fighter fill the space around the spaceports.



Ships of the Alzuk Authority tries to interfere as well, but as spaceports are dead, the new order is to charge the Alzuk spaceport in the system.



Sipan fleet with some damaged members charge the third spaceport of the system. They will destroy it, and work on a gas mine and some ships in the system. They will head for repairs with quite a few damaged ships, and possibly some lost. We believe at least 2 carriers were destroyed. Carriers are vulnerable as they are alone at the rear.



Meanwhile, Dest 2 has battled lone dagger forces at the star at their objective. They find a medium spaceport (that is not a large in disguise), and with some damaged ships they jump at the spaceport.




... and as Invasion is in position, and dest 2 is charging the spaceport, Crusher 1 move to the Najarca system one step further on.



Dest 2 is a bit depleted after taking ship damage, but they burn down the shields of the spaceport at good speed. As the spaceport dies and some ships are left, invasion is told to attack the colony. We will move invasion away when the colony is taken, before dropping all troops.



Not suprisingly, crusher is met by lone dagger ships in the independent system. As Crusher struggles with downing all pirates, Invasion fleet is told to attack the colony.

After dropping its load, invasion heads to repair its one damaged ship.

Pantulumen 2 was taken with no troops defending. At the start of the pirate base attack to remove it, it was 428 vs 99 for our benefit.

Najacra 1 managed a defense of almost 200, but it does not help much of a combined force with power of 837 (troops, armor, special forces, space control...).



Pantulumen 2 is low quality with good silicon source. The minority population is mainly Atuuk. Some Humans, Dhayut and Naxxilians too.



Najarca 1 is also of low quality, but Dhayuut. It makes it a good troop recruitment colony, and it too adds a silicon source to the empire. It is pretty much like Dhayu 3, but with a higher maximum population.

For now. Dest 2 is told to repair, almost all are damaged. Crusher 1 stays at Najarca with some damaged. The newly built Battle 4 moves to Pantulumen in case pirates visit.

We notice that the reason why the Haakonish came with the loros offer, is probably because they conquered the Loros source from the Securan.

The lone daggers are in Dhayu system, but do they have a remotely nearby base to return to?

About 5 troops are garrisoned on the new colonies. We try recruit a mortalen troop to check its strength, and recruit some new to garrison at Najarca. Colonies with only crap troop material are annoying, the mortalen could rescue this one.

It is 2163.0.29. We have busted some pirate ass, grabbed a couple of colonies, and need to reorganize the military a bit

Status

A need is there to reorganize fleets, and to shop some more. Hopefully the large dagger fleets are no more, and we can try control the skies of all colonies. It is not like we can not afford some ships there.

The prime annoyances took a beating now, but more remain on the hit list. Will we see some peace at home?



Again a galaxy map with pirate bases highlighted.

The cross is marking a colony controlled by the Najarcan Council, our early day pirates who's large spaceport we killed first. That colony could be the source of their mine attack in Montu Kudro, the northern colony in the home cluster. The colony? 88% quality which is good, but very low population. Small colonies grow larger with migration as other colonies are full, though.

One of the two pirate bases in the Sipan circle (the single big red circle not at the map edge), is the large spaceport of a group qualifying as annoying. They own the independent which can be seen as a dark ring in the red. The colony is atuuk main population and probably securan, 76% and just short of 6000M with max pop. Not good, not terrible.

The pirate base at the map edge down left of our main areas, also hide an independent. We triggered it with an exploration event, and it is a 65% securan colony. Nothing special, but that base has probably spawned a base attack, and the colony should probably be taken.

The closest base south of our area has been quiet, but the gang below that with 4 bases has attacked Dhayu 3 quite some time ago. They qualify for the hit list, but it is not a major hurry.

The four bases of the top are all owned by the guys that attacked some mines, and we also think used the small phantom fleet. To their right is a pirate controlled colony in the small orange influence circle.

That colony... is good. Very good. A 94% continental with 9000M securan and 5400M Atuuk, and some decent resources. This is Sipan 4/Beate territory. Without being in a massive hurry, it should be a target. Not in massive hurry as "building transports at Sipan and running away with the garrison" kind of hurry. Organize fleets, finish the running battle with pirates at one of the colonies, load troops, go. The AI seems in no hurry to take any pirate colony.



Diplomacy? We follow some AI suggestions when they seem a good idea, and otherwise don't pay attention. Tefnyl Hive rejected a military defense pact asked for after a suggestion. They used to reject suggested free trade agreements too.



The facility is Pantulumen 2 is the pirate facility which we are still fighting. It is over at any moment. The colony is low pop, but could get migration when ours. We got atuuk workers to move there, for instance.



We got some cruisers, but only 11 or something in a proper fleet. Some are maybe being built. As mentioned, we need to organize fleets. Another alien capital ship.

21 carriers. We built 24, so Sipan Fleet lost 3 of them. Sipan and Crusher fleets are too large to see all fleet member in the selection box, one more reason to use more powerful cruisers - we need less of them.



Still some confusing resort income, but we can live with that.

The 109 cashflow is not that impressive. We could lose the loros stores, and tax revenue drops. And we have had one leader change, now we have a leader with 35% military ship maintenance saving. If he goes, our cashflow takes a big hit. Please take care of him! 34% population growth is not bad either, neither are the other 9 bonuses he applies.

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 28
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/4/2014 12:25:44 AM   
Timotheus

 

Posts: 481
Joined: 12/13/2013
Status: offline 		Reading this guide is against my religion.

I shall alert the Dhayuk inquisition about it.

However, I must admit that I have enjoyed small parts of it, and so must now go shave my neck as something started to grow there...

(in reply to Bingeling)
Post #: 29
RE: Universe: A shadows era AAR with some automation - 6/4/2014 2:44:53 AM   
FingNewGuy


Posts: 183
Joined: 4/11/2014
From: Boulder, CO
Status: offline
quote:

However, I must admit that I have enjoyed small parts of it, and so must now go shave my neck as something started to grow there...



(in reply to Timotheus)
Post #: 30
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