Part 124: Episode X: Conclusion

I don't even know what to say about all of these bad puns. Some form of horsewhipping is definitely appropriate, but I can't think of an appropriate punishment. So enjoy this instead:

Episode X: Conclusion

Really. Finally.

Third Phase

VI. Though it would be a small thing to glass their worlds from orbit at that point, that would be too merciful for our foe. Instead, Sauron has ordered the unthinkable; a massive ground invasion of Bulrathi territory. Until he is satisfied that there is nothing more to be learned from the exercise, countless(though I will count them for posterity) billions(literally) of Sakkra will be poured into the meat grinder to satisfy his bloodlust. This directive will be satisfied only when we stop capturing new technology from Bulrathi archives.

For this phase, each year any Sakkra world will undergo a specific priority check:

** If they are within two years travel of any Bulrathi planet, any population above 50% of the maximum capacity will be sent as an invasion force to the closest Bulrathi planet that does not already have a sufficient amount committed to it from other worlds.

** If no such target exists, they will move their troops closer to the front, wherever that happens to be.

** Maximum cloning is to occur on any planet short of it's capacity, in order to ensure a ready supply of lizardpower.

Imagine the scenes on Sakkra worlds; entire families ... villages ... clans being loaded onto transports, but only after having submitted DNA samples so that they may be cloned for next year's troops. Entire generations willingly(or forcibly) martyred for the 'cause', knowing that they will die and that their children, their children's children, and quite possibly multiple generations beyond that will suffer the same fate in incomprehensibly large numbers.

The Bulrathi will be made to know the fear of giving ground against an enemy that they slaughter by the billions, yet it simply keeps coming ... and coming ... and coming .... overwhelming them who are masters of hand-to-hand combat, with sheer numbers and disregard for the lives of their citizens. Their equipment and facilities will then be appropriated to feed the already obscenely-overpowered Sakkra economic machine.

In all honesty, the biggest problem here was doing too much damage to the planets during the fleet attacks. Much of the infrastructure was reduced more than I wanted it to be. In the more extreme cases, most of the population was killed by the destruction of the planetary defenses.

Grinding Them Up

I don't think the Bulrathi have all of the top research available for ground troops. Leaving tech aside for the moment, we would expect to lose a little over twice as much as they did if we were invaded(7:3 to be exact), while a 5:1 rate is expected while we are on the attack. Since I think our tech is a little better in one or two areas, I aimed for a 4:1 ratio initially. Seemed as good a ballpark figure as anything.

We were able to target 9 Bulrathi worlds initially, almost half of their empire. Projections indicate there were enough to possibly take five systems, while the other four would merely be weakened. This initial 'shock and awe' wave would be the biggest one; in the future the limitations of cloning technology would allow for significant, but somewhat reduced numbers. A total of 2.837 billion were sent as invasion troops, not counting those transferred up from rear areas to the front lines. Over a half-billion went to Rotan alone.

Warning: This comes in at over 18 minutes, by far the longest video of this LP. And it consists of only the combat phase of the turn(2836).


https://youtu.be/b0tJwRdy1a4



Well, that took a while. It seemed, eyeballing it at the time, that it was about 3:1 kill ratio in favor of the Bulrathi. That means that at least 4:1 is where I want to be; more like 5:1 wouldn't be overly excessive in most cases. It's best to take the planet with a decent amount of population left over. We only succeeded in taking Rana, and that only barely. A maximum tech reap resulted as expected, including Industrial Waste Elimination and of course first up was the BioTerminator. Might as well start building some ships for that. Also, the Planetology capture maxed us out there, so that left three fields remaining to study.

It was time begin preparations for the final phase.

VII. Once all the technology that can be stolen, has been stolen, the invasions will cease so that a new fleet can be built. This will employ the dreaded BioTerminator that Smurch once used on Sakkra worlds, assuming that we capture it in the process. The so-called "Guava Plan" will be followed. The intention will be announced ahead of time so that Sauron can have the satisfaction of observing the panic set in and Bulrathi society tearing itself apart from the inside. Anyone foolish enough not to take their own life anywhere in Smurch's sphere of authority will be subjected to a new meaning of suffering as a massive, simultaneous BioTerminator drop sufficient to kill all of the citizenry on the largest possible planets will occur at all Bulrathi systems. The slow, excruciatingly painful deaths of his foes will serve as a grim reminder that Sauron is not to be trifled with or double-crossed ... even though he has double-crossed many, including Smurch, in the past. Only when it is complete will his anger be sated.




Here is my ode to Guava, although I hope to use this idea sometime in the future when it actually of strategic use, rather than a 'which way do I want to win' consideration. The Smurchbane, with 300 BioTerminators, has tons of space left over, a double hull just for the fun of it, and Subspace Teleporters to move in immediately(I upgraded to the Nullier instead of Stabilizer after taking this shot). In a single drop, it can exterminate all carbon-based life from any planet in the galaxy, regardless of size.

I only need one of these per system, though I'll probably end up with more. The Ultra-Rich systems Artemis and Klystron were tasked with their construction. Each can produce two per year, so in 4-5 years time I'll have enough to handle the entirety of whatever is left of the Bulrathi empire.

Speaking of which, the ground troops actually needed to stop being sent, and in some cases get redirected(so they would stay in limbo between systems for now). The reason for this is that I don't want to take too many Bulrathi systems. Two per year is the desired amount, that way we don't capture a bunch at once beyond the point where we stop acquiring new technology from them. Sauron doesn't want an excessive amount of their people to be spared the embrace of ultimate suffering.


https://youtu.be/2zcxvpJa-gI



I didn't do nearly as well at redirected transports as I thought. Still, Guradas falls, we don't care about Rana being destroyed in the least, and a bunch more of their small little ship groups flitting about have been eliminated. Plenty more advances were captured, so we will keep going. I'm particularly confused about Rigel, which had just 9M left and then had 70 or something one year later, with my ships in orbit. They must have snuck some transports in. That's a game that won't last long.

Almost all of the Bulrathi ships are in that one doomstack. And the smart tactician doesn't fight the doomstack; he ignores the doomstack.


https://youtu.be/JQPMturY2EM



Smacking the small groups of ships is getting beyond tedious -- and the Bulrathi troop transports getting through in these kinds of numbers are troubling as well. Obviously they really want to keep Rigel but they are reinforcing everywhere it seems. So I divert extra ships and troops to the systems I've been attacking specifically: Rigel and Proxima. Hopefully we can take out more of their transports before they reach the planets.


https://youtu.be/9WFpkMZbfIo



Destroying Centauri on accident sucks, but that's going to happen with this level of firepower if things keep up. All the more reason to wrap it up quickly. Finally got Rigel and (barely) Proxima. We were a couple techs short of a full load so that might be it. One system at a time now. We have 11 Smurchbanes and 16 Bulrathi systems remain, so we will be ready for extermination soon.

A truly stupid amount of ships and troops were sent to Willow to(theoretically) complete this nonsense. I'm sparing everyone the fleet battle spam that resulted. At one point I got the message "300 of 536 transports penetrate defenses blah blah blah" ... with a massive fleet in orbit. How do they stop my transports when I control the system? I think the answer may be that within the 'Next Turn' process, they build ships/bases first, then transports arrive, then fleet combat, then ground combat. So basically they can build stuff and for the purposes of shooting down transports for that turn I can't do anything about it. Which cost the lives of almost a quarter-billion Sakkra troops. At the same time.

** Note: Alternatively, perhaps the Combat Transporters DO work, at least for the AI?? ... **

Meanwhile more colonies of the Bulrathi were occasionally getting blown up on accident despite me trying to be careful about it.




Took several years but finally got the job done. Would have been a LOT easier just to wipe the bastards out. But no new tech ... which means it is time to do just that.

The first test of the Smurchbane failed. Basically, it is apparently possible for the BioTerminators to 'miss', which I didn't consider. So I needed a few ships per planet. No problem, just build more. Perhaps it was fitting that we were ready five years later, exactly halfway through the 29th century at 2850. Normally the Council would be voting, but there is no more High Council. It is simply us.


https://youtu.be/7AUQGrMfnYg



Sauron brings new meaning to the term 'ruthless tyrant'. By the way, I didn't understand at first why the Subspace Teleporter worked sometimes and not others. Turns out the Bulrathi have Subspace Interdictors, so some of the ships can prevent me from using it. If it'd been just a little bit slower, torpedoes would have gotten me on the way in to one of the planets.

And now for a bit of alternate path. When the final attack was launched in 2850, there were still two fields that had not maxed out in research. By judicioius Next Turn spamming, I finished it up 24 years later.




Nothing else to research. Literally.




The Bulrathi have already destroyed a few worlds, and I scrapped all my ships at one point to give more funding to research. Almost 300k in the reserve without trying, and at one point planetary production was above 100k.

Finally, a couple of absurdly overpowered designs just to show the upper limits. Here's the most expensive thing I can build:




If you use lesser engines then it gets more expensive to put weapons on that require a lot of power, but assuming you aren't intentionally sabotaging things it's impossible to build an expensive ship. Everything else(computers, shields, ecm, specials, armor, etc.) has a much more forgiving cost-to-space ratio and would just make this cheaper. All the engines cost 1 credit each no matter what. The most expensive special is the Inertial Nullifier at a piddling 24 credits. Computers are 50 or less, shields 70 or less, manuevering thrusters in the low 30s, and if you go crazy with a double Neutronium hull that's 75 credits. At 15 credits, the Death Ray is triple the price of any other single weapon system.

Flipping it around and looking at it from a Space point of view, here's a ship with the biggest thing on it in every category, save for Weapons.




I like how the Reserve Fuel Tank(600) is the biggest special you can put on. Apparently fuel compression is not a thing in the MOO universe. Even when you get Thorium Fuel Cells(unlimited fuel) that's still the case. So you'd never want to build this, but if you did ...

My list of weapons has 26 items on it, not counting the two types of launchers for each missile. Most of them, 19 to be exact, can fit a full complement of each onto this design: 396 of them, 99 in each slot. The others:

** 265 Heavy Phasors OR
** 225 Mauler Devices OR
** 216 Stellar Converters OR
** 195 Hellfire Torpedo Launchers OR
** 179 Proton Torpedo Launchers OR
** 157 Plasma Torpedo Launchers OR
** 30 Death Rays(the slightest bit under 31) at a fraction of their original size.

With the ADC, this thing also repairs over a thousand HP(1080) per turn, just for the fun of it, along with the impressive missile defense and maximum shields. And of course, this would be slightly worse if anyone had invented Warp 9 engines. Nobody got Radiated Landings either. But most other techs were invented by somebody along the line, and thus eventually came into our possession.

Post-Mortem

Safe to say I don't plan on every playing a 550-year game of Master of Orion again. And if I do, please hit me in the face with a mallet as many times as required(jk) to dissuade me from said activity. While I'm definitely pleased with being able to rise from such a poor start to victory, there were a couple of things my favor. One was the Bulrathi-Silicoid split. While it sucked to have them so powerful, they canceled each other out and created a deadlock in the High Council that provided me with time. I think the Orion capture and even moreso the Mrrshan campaign were definitely the turning points. Those gave me the critical mass I needed to really start the long climb to relevancy.

I would not have won without the community in this thread. In particular, reminding me once again of the importance of tech trades. I think this game has cured a hole in my thinking. The reason I didn't do it more in the past was that they usually ask for better than they give, and I didn't want to be helping the opposition. The more salient point though is that anything you gain is still a gain overall, and relative to the other powers. Particularly early in the game when there are six active empires, if you lose compared to one but gain compared to the other four, that's a clear win. I'm now of the mindset that I need to be doing them a LOT more. There are times when I still won't(the offered options aren't good enough to help, I need to serve some tech for tribute purposes with each race, what they want is obscenely good, etc.) For example in this game I wasn't the least bit interested in handing over Death Rays or Robotics VII to the Bulrathi under any circumstances. Trading techs can give me more options to tribute other races with, but not having anything left to offer is a big problem. Once I'm a few rungs up the tree though, I plan on going pretty nuts with them to fill things out.

And there's also the fact that it was another non-Psilon(or Klackon or Human for that matter) game. It's not an accident that both of the from-the-ashes comebacks have not involved the Psilons. They have a way of making such efforts turn out to be fruitless.

However this time we did muddle through, see some things we haven't before, and against the odds preserved my record of not losing twice in a row. 6-4 in the first 10 attempts. Next up is a preview of our next race, and of course the poll about what order to do the final trio in.