Part 27: Episode III: 2450 - 2474

Episode III: 2450-2474




We've surpassed the Silicoids in production, and population/tech are about even. Only their fleet is temporarily keeping them ahead overall. That's the good news. Bad news is the Psilons are still running away ...




It doesn't get any better than that in terms of the Harmony with the Silicoids and Psilons. It's just one big love-in.




This though is the stuff that nightmares are made of. Doing ok in Force Fields and Construction actually, though they've gotten 20% Waste now as well. We'll have that Powered Armor soon. They are way ahead of us in terms of the speed race in Propulsion; once we get Pulson Missiles we'll just be a little behind in Weapons tech. Advanced Soil Enrichment is a big one in Planetology but we're on the way to that. That'll leave them with still a +30M per planet in terraforming(60 vs. 30) which is pretty sizable. Computers is the worst though. On top of their big population edge which we can cut into, they now have Robotic Controls V AND VI!! That means a production explosion on their part is coming, and it could possibly be a decisive one. I hope we pop one of those advances soon, so we can at least try to keep in contact.




Plugging along here, about halfway to a number of new things including the vital Advanced Soil Enrichment. We can research a lot faster when not building more missile bases; another round of that is underway but should finish soon. Absolutely can't afford to leave our border worlds underprotected.




As you can see we've got multiple places with over 50 bases, the list of planets is longer than this and there are others that have some. All the border worlds have about 25-30 minimum or are working towards that. The cost is reasonable still. With the speed of the Psilon ships though, their effectiveness is fading. What's saving us right now is they don't have any advanced bombs. Yet. That and the goodwill built up, of course.




By 2453, Fierias and Simius both had planetary shields up and were well into base-building, and the Mrrshan ships were retreating or destroyed. On to Antares now. There were no bases there, so it was a quick job. The longest part would be waiting a few years for the ground troops to arrive.




Powered Armor arrives in 2457. Adamantium armor material is up next as we are starting to get into some pretty high-end stuff now.




This is an interesting bit of diplomacy AI. They won't sign peace with you if there are allies also at war: the allies will just ask you to declare war on them again, so it's a waste of time. We refuse here of course. A year later Antares falls. To genocide, or not to genocide? I was going to leave them with a single world. Our relations are good with the other major powers so we could survive the hit, but I don't want to flip anyone to the Psilons side in the High Council. We'll leave Selia to the Mrrshan.




So what next then? The Bulrathi would be the obvious next target. They are allied with the Sakkras(who cares) and the Psilons. Their three planets are, in order from upper left, Pollus, Ursa, and Regulus. Regulus sucks, but the other two are nice big ones. They'd make fine additions.




Also got the new ECM in here. Unfortunately all that was available was more ECM -- no robotics. That sucks. There were a couple of nice Propulsion options but I clicked on the wrong one by mistake: inferior Fusion Drives(Warp 4) when we just got Warp 5. Grrr. But it won't take long to get them.

We inquire of the Psilon about them breaking their alliance with the bears.




Thanks 'buds'! Now to go bear-hunting. This will piss off the Sakkras and them, but as long as the Silicoids stay with us in the Council, or are at least neutral, we'll be fine. Tried to work out a tech trade for some better robotics, but they wouldn't have it as expected. Everything they were willing to offer, we have better of. Quite annoying, though good design, that they won't hand over what we need!

Advanced Soil Enrichment popped up next, and the only option to proceed further was +60M terraforming, which will add 30M more to all our planets. Perfect.




Here's how the homeworld looks: it takes a significant amount of the output of even a large planet, but honestly it's quite cheap considering will get this done in a year. Eco slider says 'Gaia' until you have enough to complete the task -- then it will say 'Clean' like usual. Since this only helps standard planets and hostile ones can't use it, over a third of our systems will not benefit.




Pulson missiles are in, and the bottom three are our new choices. All beam weapons of one kind or another. The Gauss Autocannon is in the same vein as the Gatling Laser; a multi-fire weapon with four attacks per turn, except it also halves shields. The Particle Beam is more powerful shield-halver except it only fires once, and the Plasma Cannon does 6-30 damage without the shield benefit as a more 'biggest gun we can find' option. The Gauss Autocannon is our choice here, and would give us a beam weapon worth putting on a ship.

After taking out the missile bases on Pollus, the Bulrathi naturally declare war; and the Mrrshan are pleased, saying that our attacks 'prove the honor in your words of peace'. We've had no words of peace for you, but ok.

The Gaia transformations complete on a dozen worlds, expanding the sizes by as much as 60M -- Vega now holds a max. of 215M. The growth rate increase means we'll be seeing a boom here, and I'm interested to see how much of the gap with the Psilons we can close when it comes to population. The system is remote enough that it will take at least four years to get enough troops there. 71M Bulrathi to defeat, and while our tech should more than neutralize their natural strength advantage we will take a lot more losses than we were against the Mrrshan.




With the Cloaking Device finished, we set our sights on the Zyro Shield. It's like Anti-Missile Rockets only better, with a base chance of incinerating incoming missiles at almost twice as high(75% compared to 40%). No matter how advanced the missile, some of them won't get through.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M19mPeyWFPE



Well we have a new planet, but that research bug will hurt. Probably about 10-12 years to make up that much work. And the cats finally meet their demise. Interestingly the Silicoids didn't take over the planet ... but bombed it from orbit. We ought to be able to get there first with a colony ship, and take it out from under our 'allies'.




Here's a basic destroyer-size design with our fastest engines. Once miniaturization advances to the point, and we're well past it, that you can build colony ships on a destroyer hull, it's even more trivial to settle new colonies.

Our outdated cruisers move on to Ursa, the Bulrathi homeworld. In 2469 we capture, along with four completely obsolete technologies. That brings up the question, now what?




The current system count has us in the lead now clearly with 23 planets, Silicoids still 19, Psilons still 17. That's much better. The question at the moment is whether we want to build a modern fleet to attack the Silicoids and expand further, or whether we are big enough to catch the Psilons in tech. I don't think we are, not yet. They've recently gotten some new toys, including Industrial Waste Elimination(utopia state where no eco spending is needed at all), +80M terraforming, and the devastating Neutronium Bomb. Their battle computers and shields are twice as good as ours ... yeah, it's not good.

On the other hand, here are rocks:




Beam weapons are really the only noteworthy advantage they have, and they are notably horrible in missile tech so their bases will be of little consequence. Not sure how it's possible, but it looks like they are still using Warp 1 engines!! In other words, they are ripe for the picking -- but we don't want to attack until we can be confident that we can survive them voting Psilon in the High Council. Not there yet.




We should never be able to get away with this at this point in the game, but so be it. Introducing the Ranger, a torpedo-bearing cruiser. Extremely similar to the Stinger Cruisers that we've used against the Mrrshan and Bulrathi, except that it packs a bigger punch. A reasonable amount of speed in combat is vital, and with the Silicoids having neither speed or quality missiles for their bases we should be able to run circles around them: literally in this case. Once again this is a ship that could potentially do damage to Psilons as well -- but not much, and they are fast enough to intercept and punish us. Our goal is not to fight them.

So then we'll proceed further with the goal of building up our newly acquired territories and fortifying them, while also getting a fleet of Rangers going. As with the previous conflict we won't need a lot, which will allow a significant amount of research to happen at the same time.




Got our unnecessary new engines, and now a new choice. The Intergalactic Star Gates make relocating ships across long distances very easy -- once they have been built. Quite worthwhile, and not a hard choice.

In 2473 Adamantium armor comes in(250% hp increase), and the even better Neutronium armor(300%) is our only next option.




Sakkras are back on the sidelines; I thought they'd vote Psilon here so I'll take it.




The Silicoids stay with us after the Bulrathi give the Psilons a vote.




Continuing to explode their numbers ... we have 24 votes so we've basically kept even with them this round, +9 while they added +8. We can't avoid vote for Tachaon without handing them the win so it's abstain this time around. If the Psilons got Silicoid support it would give them 48 votes, which still wouldn't be enough -- they'd need Sakkras to put them over the top.

I expect breaking our alliance with the Silicoids will result in enough bad will to throw everyone the Psilons' way. We're close to a veto bloc right now though; 28 votes are needed at the moment for that, just four more than we have. I think the time is right. If we take enough planets before the next vote, we can do this.