Part 31: Episode III: 2525 - 2549

Episode III: 2525-2549




Our numbers have gotten to the point where the Psilons' edge in the navy and tech has been overcome by sheer size.




In 2526, this is the first casualty as the big Psilon fleet shows up here, a recent acquisition from the Silicoids with no defenses. 18 Knight Cruisers were obliterated before they could escape. They'll do some damage on our frontier, but most of the planets we've conquered have defenses or are building them. In the grand scheme of things, this doesn't matter unless they knock out a lot of planets.




Another, more valuable planet a year later fell to a smaller force. Two dozen more cruisers, the even more antiquated Rangers, fell. That's little more than a savings on ship maintenance, but they didn't even get off a shot with their torpedoes. Until we get more Paladins out there, and maybe even afterwards, we have no hope of resisting the Psilon fleets.

At the same time, we capture Morrig, leaving the Silicoids with only one planet. We'll leave it alone since the Psilons would just capture it right back. Probably won't hold Morrig either, but we'll try to build it up just in case.




What ships we do have are quickly relocated, thanks to our stargates mostly, to 'frontier' systems that the Sakkras are threatening. They've got nothing better than fusion beams on any design we've seen, but that's still enough to overrun us in numbers when we don't have bases in place. The ships are really fairly useless until we have larger numbers of them. Lost one Paladin, a drop in the bucket, in a test fight as they were able to wear it down. It shouldn't take many of them together though for the Hellfire Torpedoes to make an impact. Once we get shields and at least one base up, the lizards run, unable to penetrate our defenses.

Offensive operations have ceased at this point. Right now I need to determine a reasonable 'critical mass' for our Paladins. The first tests will come against the Sakkra. After that, the plan is to go here:




This is by far the most lightly-defended Psilon system, which makes perfect sense. I don't actually want to take it yet, but since most of them have 80+ missile bases, it will serve as the best available test to see how our ships will fare against their defenses.




A few years later, 2531, and the Psilons take on another ripe target. This one would take a bit longer, but would be a big world for them. Fortunately they are running out of undefended systems to harvest. Up to a few dozen Paladins, and our ship maintenance at a midlevel amount of 13.4%, I decided it was time for a run at Collassa.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4eGjR4lZ8A



Well, that's not good. Their bases are completely immune to our torpedoes.




This however, was some good news. Advanced Cloning came in which was your basic who cares, but Complete Terraforming will gives us another 40M per planet. As the name indicates, it's the final flat-rate size increase.

As for the Paladins -- if they couldn't do a thing against the Psilon bases, I needed to try them out against their ships. The 15 shield strength mentioned is just their deflectors: the Psilons must have at least Class X Planetary Shields as well. Only Zeon missiles would have a chance of getting through, and they'd do minimal damage so it's not worth it. Going after the planets they'd taken from us seemed as good an idea as any -- those would be the only ones without big missile defense. The good news is that we took the barrage from their bases quite well. The defensive abilities of the Paladin are fine, at least against bases ... they just can't harm them.

If we can whittle down the Psilon fleets, then it would be worth finishing off the Silicoids, attacking the Sakkra, going after Orion even ... but if not, all we'd be doing is handing over more territory to the enemy.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECHU-i9OHQI



2534. This was .. disheartening. Our missiles cannot even hit their ships at this point, at least the most advanced ones. They have a magic-level tech advantage. So we're pretty screwed.




Gee thanks. A year later we did fight off a few cruisers at Rotan, and acquired the Black Hole Generator. Lightning Shield, upgrade on our current Zyro, is up next. The BHG is a great late-game 'cheese' way to defeat a more powerful enemy, as it will destroy a percentage of their ships so long as we can survive long enough to deploy it.

Also this ...




There were no Psilons here by the time our Paladins arrived, but at least we can give them a bit of their own medicine from time to time. I'm trying to seek out an engagement with a small fleet of theirs to gauge how much damage, if any, we can do. Then I spotted a sizable fleet headed for Tyr; we could get there at the same time they did. Tyr is a developing rich planet in the extreme upper-right. They'll almost certainly win and take it, but that's not the point here.

2537 -- Silicoids want peace and get it, not that it really matters. Psilon spies blow up a few factories on Ursa, but it's just a blip.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw2jp04XLYg



Clearly we can do some damage to them, but very little. At least we chased them off, delaying them taking this rich world. I don't see any point in building any more Paladins. I think it's time for something else. We need the secrets of Orion, and the ones we have could well be strong enough to take on the Guardian. At least that way they'd go to some use.

The fleet is sent to rendezvous at Argus, which will take a few years. All spending will be flooded into research in the meantime, tripling our investment there immediately to over 30k per year. The cloaking and displacement devices(latter esp) are just making things too tough on us. We need better ships to have a chance in a war of attrition.

A couple years later, the Psilons came to Selia and Ursa. They unaccountably retreated from Ursa with their main fleet(dozens of capital ships, 1500+ cruisers, several thousand destroyers) but took Selia. In the process I discovered something profoundly stupid I'd been doing with the missile bases. I'd been leaving them on 'Scatter Pack' mode instead of switching to 'standard missiles'. The latter is the more effective Zeons, instead of Scatter Pack Vs: good, but incapable of penetrating Psilon defenses.

Only one capital ship at Selia survived from an admittedly modest fleet. It still did this ...




The planet was mostly decimated from repeated bioattacks during the battle anyway. Next time I'll get a chance I'll demonstrate the switching of missiles. The Psilons still have enough firepower to overwhelm any fortress worlds -- but not without cost if I do things correctly.

Meanwhile I am acutely aware that we cannot afford to keep gradually losing systems forever. Eventually the ability to support a large enough fleet, even with the right tech, to challenge the eggheads will be lost. Time is of the essence here. It's basically a race to develop and deploy enough of another, improved generation of warship.

Two years later, in 2541, the assembled fleet leaves Argus. 65 Paladin capital ships, 140 Knight cruisers. Everything we've got. In two years' time, one of two things will happen; we will reap the rewards of Orion ... or the ship maintenance budget will drop to virtually nothing. Meanwhile four different new advances have reached the 'prototype' phase(i.e, some chance of discovery each year). Another crucial moment in our struggle is about to arrive.

In the interim, Advanced Construction Tech III comes in, the least useful of our current research though it does give the cost and miniaturization as always. Meanwhile a big artifacts planet that we took from the Silicoids some decades ago, Zhardan, is finally online and gives a nice boost to research.

And then, in 2543, it was time. Time to do battle with the Guardian. Here goes nothing ...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbNICVnww24



Well that was rather anti-climactic. Generally a mid-level tech fleet(L 30 or so) can take the Guardian, but I've never fought it on Impossible so I didn't really know. Turns out that's basically still true. I'll have to try it again with a somewhat lower-level fleet in another game, if an opportunity presents itself.

While the Death Ray is the sexiest of the new finds with it's obscene damage profile, the Proton Torpedo is worth serious consideration as well. It might actually give us the best 'bang for the buck' I think. 75 damage each, with the usual once-per-two-turns firing limitation, but it's a 12th of the cost and a 7th of the size of the Really Big Gun(tm). Obviously the time to use these is now before the Psilons steal them or something. Before we lose any more territory. Etc. Our new design will employ both, along with a bit of gauss to deal with destroyer ships. If one system proves far superior to the other we can re-design.

The Excaliber(sp), ladies and gentlemen:




No shielding can withstand the levels of damage this monstrosity can dish out. The only question is having enough of them to survive long enough against the Psilons.

It's slightly slower than the Paladin, and weaker in beam defense(due to the HEF instead of Inertial Stabilizer). Costs just a little more(5.3k compared to 4.6k), but has 10 Proton launchers instead of 11 Hellfire, 3 Gauss to 1, and of course the pair of Death Rays. Time to get to work on this.

The Paladins remain in orbit over Orion, which we will colonize and at least make an attempt at defending. If the Psilons come in force they will overwhelm us, but we aren't going to just give it to them. The Knight cruisers are scrapped though, saving a bit of overhead; just about exactly 1k per year, or 2-3%. The hope is to go on the offensive in some limited manner in about a decade.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEDH6ZI7HQ0



They came back to Ursa, and this time they didn't run away. Note at the beginning here the switch from S-Pack to Missiles at the bottom of the screen; this is what I was not doing before and it cost quite a bit.

As you can see it basically didn't matter; they had enough firepower here to obliterate us with only one volley getting away, though I did take out some cruisers with it.




Ionic Pulsars came in which I don't really care about : InterPhased Drives are next here. They'll jump us from Warp 5 to Warp 8. The warp speed is nice, but far nicer will be the defensive bonus we'll get from more maneuverability in combat.

You know of course what happened next: Ursa was glassed from orbit. The former Bulrathi homeworld was one of our best ship-producing worlds. Was.

And then ...




Sure, why not. I don't think it will last long, but any reprieve gives us time that we desperately need.




*Sigh*. No we haven't, but whatever. Your time of relevance has long since passed.

It's 2547 at this point, coming up on another charade of a Council vote. A century ago or more I decided that this game needed to end, one way or the other, via the 'Tyrant' path; either us or the Psilons will not survive to the end of it. The first 15 Exaclibers are on their way to Orion, and most of the Paladins will now head off in various directions to crush the pathetic Sakkra worlds. Once hostilities are renewed with the Psilons they may take some of these, but the more territory we have the better off we'll be. It shouldn't take very long at all to end the lizards.

This proved ineffective. They've upgraded their bases to a total shielding of 12, just enough to absorb all impact from our torpedoes. Apparently I was incorrect; their damage is halved against planets as well. What resulted was a rather humorous situation in which their missiles(Merculite) couldn't harm us, but we couldn't harm them either. That leaves the Paladins with little useful purpose other than sucking the life out of the economy, so they were scrapped as well. Attacking the Sakkra would have to wait until we get some Excalibers in position.

2549 was a momentous year before the vote even came.




This is a heck of a weapon -- but now absurdly obsolete, packing just 10% of the Death Ray's punch. We also got the final step in Robotic Controls though(VII). Time for another industrial expansion. The next choice was between the Technology Nullifier and improving our Battle Computers. I'm going to want both, but went with the Nullifier first. Tri-Focus Plasma Cannon(20-50 damage times 3 beams) was next up in the Weapon tree. We've seen this in action on multiple Psilon designs. Also, with the Excalibers now approaching Orion, the Paladins were scrapped. This cuts our ship maintenance in half for the moment.




56 out of 106 votes. That's 15 short of what we'd need to win the vote, but as I said I'm not planning on doing that anyway. On the other side, 40 for the Psilons, 9 Sakkra, 1 Silicoid.

Things have gotten very simple now. Soon the most destructive war this age of the galaxy has yet seen will commence. The pawns will be removed, and only the would-be monarchs will remain. Which of us comes out on top remains an open question though ...