RBSotS1 SG14 - The Weakest Link!

[Abyss]

St. Claire stared at the interface that he had to interact with for the Zuul's automated system. It wasn't the prettiest of sights, but he'd seen worse, at least there was something to work with. To anyone who has ever governed a Zuul empire from the bottom up the starting statistics are quite jarring. The Zuul prefer to name their ships in sequential order, changing only a few weapons and then creating a whole new ship. This is is the first problem that was immediately rectified, but it won't stay that way for long. A few new designs were initiated with the Brawler, a Stormer/Hvy Stormer Crusier, being the bulk of the new fleet. Most of the cruisers to date have been largely missile boats, which work fine for current engagements, but more and more opposing ships are engaging at a nearer proximity and our missile boats are getting only one to two volleys off before being obliterated. The current empire statistics are as follows:







e: more to come

[ZedF]

How's the rest of the report coming, Abyss?

[Abyss]

The following is a brief account of St. Claire's attempt to rectify the Zuul situation.

Starting out it was clear that this was going to be a difficult journey. There were numerous Rip Bores just floating about in space, my first priority was to get most of them doing maintenance work while a select few branched out into new worlds to find either mining rocks or a potential colony. Oh, there was also that incoming fleet to the colony of Orcus, I remember that day. The day where every Zuul I ever liked as a military commander died.



Fortunately we were able to turn the prosperous planet of Ke'Sothram from a flourishing Morrigi paradise into a useless, inhabitable rock. Missiles do good work.



Despite the loss at and of Orcus I had dispatched a fleet there in order to change the outlook to something better. In this I succeeded, even if it cost a few ships here and there.



Awaru, however, was a different story.



There was also some plan to pay a visit to Shuu'nan already in play when I was put in control. This did not go over that well since even though they lost a significant amount of ships the fleet could not sustain the losses they incurred.




Chepren was also a dismal failure, but at least we destroyed their gate! (for the one turn they had 300 ships there)




The Director probed us a bit at some colonies, but they had poor missile defense and Zuul missiles actually had a purpose.



We didn't see the Morrigi destruction fleet headed to Channor until it was too late. After this battle they would destroy the remaining satellites and hover around the planet, exterminating the colony. They didn't, however, go anywhere else. Preferring to stay and taunt the dying inhabitants rather than bring the fight to another planet. This was their folly.



Gully Foyle didn't have any better time trying to take Solaris than The Director did.



Oh, thanks for telling me about killing those VN Motherships, Zuul. I'm sure this won't happen again.




Back to Channor with a vengeance!


Maybe I spoke too soon.




Paid another visit to Awuru, it was painful.




We did manage to destroy the colony of Uul, founded by The Directory. The unfortunate part was that I had hoped there would be many more there, and so I sent a sizable fleet to destroy a tiny colony. They have been sent elsewhere at this point.



Battles galore, and the Tarkans had already destroyed this Morrigi planet when I happened to roll up to it.



Poor PD led to the demise of most of their ships.



This fleet needed to make a pit stop before hitting Tera, I think the new designs were doing well. Unfortunately, this is towards the end of my tenure so I have no idea if the Zuul will adapt or not.




Research completed for these turns are: Heavy Planetary Missile, Salvage Technology and Asteroid Mining.

[Abyss]

Ending summary, since it's important for voting and I'll start to RP some from my previous post. The Zuul had 20 colonies when I started and 20 colonies when I finished. A few were sanitized by VN Berserkers and others were just destroyed due to not having enough or powerful enough ships at the right places. From the ship statistics here are the counts

DEs Lost: 45
DEs Destroyed: 36
CRs Lost: 137
CRs Destroyed: 105
Previous DEs: 146
Current DEs: 114
Previous CRs: 215
Current CRs: 174

Many CR designs were fission and obsolete. I found this out by a lot of trial and error during planetary defenses where my ships would crumple as soon as they came out of node space. Current statistics are as followed.

Ranking: We fell to 7 in Income


Though Planetary income is down, industrial output is up due to Asteroid Mining coming in. Also, a few special projects are being undertaken due to the new Repair and Salvage ships in our armadas.


Political situation looks basically the same.


Hivers and Tarkans are now tied, Zuul are tied with the orange Liir. Song of Fire is still in last, despite our efforts. The Morrigi are hanging in there at number 5. Gully Foyle has fallen a bit to number 4 and the Director is reigning supreme at number 1, but for how much longer?

[PvtNutter]

Good job abyss, and everyone else,too. Will be interesting to see what ai does in the next round with the help we have them.

About the voting. Should we pm our three votes to zedf so we don't bread each other? Then when they are in he can post the results?

[PvtNutter]

Interesting observation about the rankings change thing that Purplemarmot saw. As he pointed out, our picking on the highest ranked neighbor has had the effect of pulling several factions into a very similar middle-standings position, with little difference between 2 and 5th, or even 7th maybe.

I was curious, so I loaded the save 101 I uploaded. Game loaded still with my rankings. I closed it, opened it again and opened up in the Hiver slot, like purple did. When I first opened, rankings were the same as for me. I made no changes, just saved as a new file. Closed, opened the new file and boom, same changed rankings as purplemarmot saw.

Now, I have seen that when human loads an easy or hard ai, as you either grant or take away econ bonues, etc. But these are all normal difficulty ai. So even when all are set to normal, loading into a slot as a human somehow affects the rankings.

Interesting... So a true ranking of the factions against each other in order to ascertain the last player can probably only be accurate if we load into the 1st place faction, save it again then reopen to see who is now last.

Proof of point, below is Abyss's stats after loading into the director, saving and reloading.
It actually affects our play because only Painful Burden is an option for next player, assuming we vote out Song of Fire, as Zuul are now tied with Gully, not PB. Meaning you did better for them than you thought you did, Abyss!
EDIT: fixing image

[ZedF]

About the voting. Should we pm our three votes to zedf so we don't bread each other? Then when they are in he can post the results?

I'm willing to do that if people want, or if you want to just toss them out in the open that's fine with me as well. Whatever you think is more fun; this is meant to be fairly lighthearted after all.

[PvtNutter]

I think "breading" each other sounds pretty light-hearted...
Stoopid droid swype, enter what I mean, not what I say!

Let's just throw it out then and run with it - I'm feeling particularly obtuse today apparently, making things harder than they should be...

- Faction with the most successful attack or most impenetrable defense: +1 point
- For Faction with the most pitiful attack or most porous defense: -1 point
- Most entertaining faction or Judge's whimsy: +1 point

+1 to Director for taking Abyss's initial play and working well enough with it over all our sessions to still be #1,
so they must be exhibiting good attack and defense against the other AI players to keep that position.
-1 to Tarks for that pitiful attack where Song of Fire killed all their ships with no losses at all...
+1 to Gully cuz I still think he's gonna come from behind to depose that Director!

[Abyss]

+1 for the Hivers. As much as I deem the Director an important part even with the beating I put on them in the beginning, I have yet been able to crack a Hiver world. This due in part to the 200+ destroyers they were able to gate in to a world. They clearly have the gate capacity and ships so they are currently the best in my book for defense.

-1 for Song of Fire, they've lost more colonies than they can replace in output and their defense isn't up to par. There have been valiant efforts to right the wrongs, but the AI isn't responding well to the counseling.

+1 to the Zuul for having way more colonies than I ever thought possible and Fusion at a time where research still is completely terrible.

[PaulMcC]

+1 for the Hivers for static defense
-1 for Painful Burden for failing to capture the director's colonies when attacking with high tech cloaked fleets vs a pretty shoddy defense
+1 for the director for putting gauss destroyers up against cruisers and managing to create a win (although a pretty painful one)

[purplemarmot]

Sorry for the delay guys. Had a few days of account issues. I could see the posts and thread just waiting for my feedback, but not able to logon to provide it.

Anyway:

+1 The Director. That was a pretty nice offensive to launch them into first place and keep them there. Entertaining too, yes I know that's the third category.
-1 Song of Fire. While the Liir are my favorite species, I can't see this game being much fun with us continuing to play as them.
+1 Imperial Hive. I really don't like voting for the team I played for, but they've gone from 7th to 3rd/2nd. Even improved the next turn set from 5th to 3rd/2nd. Look really strong, and I'd like to see what happens with them in the 2nd round.

[ZedF]

I think that's everyone, yes?

So, it looks like Song of Fire is voted out of existence... though it could have easily been someone else, given the 1-vote margin! With a wave of a Q-like hand and a 'poof', they are summarily disintegrated, to the last fin.

Anyway, PaulMcC is now up, I believe. When you log in, do so as Song of Fire, surrender (from the diplo screen,) and end turn. Then quit and load the autosave, swapping into the new lowest place contestant, bearing in mind the no duplicates rule.

[PaulMcC]

Great
I'm away this weekend so realistically won't pick up the game until Monday evening.
Happy to turn swap with anyone who can be more rapid. (Otherwise I will play Mon/Tues and post Tuesday evening.)

[PvtNutter]

It's purely up to you, but id be fine with swapping. Should be able to play tonight. Post if you want me to for sure so we don't duplicate

[ZedF]

Go ahead and play, if he doesn't see your post and duplicates, you don't have to post your results. But that way if he just can't respond, you may as well swap by default.