BlueInstinct vs FireStorm20 - Special kind of AAR

[FireStorm20]

I had and have a still ongoing epic mp game with Bluesintainct.I just simply love this game , it had so many dramtic changes and suprising moments and so much very even, tough assymetric,struggle.Really it was all time fight for life (at least for me , but i think for Blueinstinct too), if you made even one bad decision, you would feel it soon.

I decided to write a sort of AAR , tough a special one.It wont be a story/history but more of a plan/strategy overview and then the outcome of that plan.I think it shows very good why i consider SOTS2 the deepest strategy on market atm (if only AI would be smart enough to force you to stuff like this:) ) and why I like it that much:).You got plans inside of plans, deceits, counters, playing for time etc.....

Settings:
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Map Wave -An interesting choice for 2 players as there is one slot/part of galaxy left for grabbing, that isnt obviously near anyone.
Random 50 % - at my request, to slow undefended reckless expansion
No GMs
5 minutes battle timer

Begining Era (From start till first serious battles/defining of borders)
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Overall analysis before the game: The Liir will grow stronger and stronger as time go by and they got time to research.The sooner and harder I strike the better.The last sweet spot for morrigi is around flagship and ideally the game should be won or strongly in my favour by then( we alrdy know it didnt happen , tough on other hand the Blusinstinct prophecy that he as liir "doesnt usually need antyhign higher then BCs" also didnt come true ).Avoid my standard patented and quite scary beamers/phasors early combo , as I used it in prev game with BlueInstinct and he will expect it, overall try to play differently then last time


Begining Era plans
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1-Scrap station level 3 (to high upkeep) build a level 1.Design for no prototypes needed ships.

2-Colonize as many low CH world as possible.Leave high CH for later,when colonizing one wont shut down your entire economy.

3-Explore fast to discover low CH best worlds.

4-Get as soon as possible in Liir space and start exploring/mapping, bombing whatever defensless planets are left, using the relative high initial speed of morrigi (my standard scout fleet :1 command,4 supply ,1 gravboat).Hurt them and force to spend on defence, slow their expansion.Also additional pressure on this as i observed a tendency of Blueinstinct to expand very recklesly, leaving him vulnerable but very dangerous if not stopped.Map will favour his approach as he has the galaxy 3rd players empty slot arm access, i am bottlnecked and farer from it.

5- Trade trade trade --research trade first and build it up everywhere apart from few production systems.Honestly there were maybe 30 turns i avent been buildinng/funding freighters ( many were lost to pirates tough)

6-Build defense fleets around the 3 startign planets so they can avert a catashtorphe (loss of one of them early) due to unlucky random encounter(drone platform wouldnt stop von neuman , which could drain the planet dry ).Defend with drone platforms only on rest of the planets, leaving them defensless early on (if they die no big loss, can recoloznie fast)

7-Build a station around every a bit developed planet (when a loss would start to be felt ) to save from ghost ship

8-Concentrate on trade/economic research , the liir are slow early and their ship fragile as glass. Moreover the battlefornt will develop along the newest colonized planets, if i loose a few wont be much of a loss, i will have time to build the fleet.

9-Overpopulate all planets except designed "shipyard worlds" for max incoem and more importantly trade.

Begining Era outcome
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1-The defense fleets around the 3 home systems were a waste, there was no von neumann in this galaxy.
2-No ghost ship either, maybe with 50 % random it doesnt appear, so the rush build of stations was also wasteful
3-Nevertheless imho my expansion and economy were impressive.I chanced into very good systems nearby, tough that good luck was soon offset by gigantic bad luck in research....
4-The drone platforms have saved a few planets that would die from random encounters, so it was the right call.
5-The exploration of Liir part of galaxy was a moderate success, I managed to map many systems and more or less extrapolate the extend of Blueinstincts expansion, bombed 2-3 planets, maybe forced him to produce some defense fleets.The final result of the analysis was that Liir had few colonized systems and even less with trade stations, and that things looked quite good for me.

Big ugly suprrise at end of the era -> First serious battle contact on the slowly developing border between our empires: My fleet , albeit basic armor ships, was shred to pieces by Liir battleriders cruisers. I was tottaly shocked to see battleriders that early on.To this day i cant understand how Blusintict managed to do it, with his puny scouted earlier empire.Anyway the battle was lost fast and the planet destroyed.Altough the planet loss was a calcualted risk and expected outcome, the battleriders cruisers were a nasty surprise.

I woudl love if BlueInstinct would write his recolection , so we can confront our point of views....


To be continued soon , with counter to BRs...

[BlueInstinct]

Early Era, Liir point of few:

scrapped the lvl3 naval
ignored the chance of randoms on my starting planets
scouted my surroundings - - - > rather average tending to bad planets.
grabbed what was colonizable, got trade early, went straight into BR's after that, knowing that liir BR's can shredd everythign that doesnot field dedicated PD

my plan: get savings up as fast as possible to increas economic rating and therfore the tax rate.
worked out well, and i was on tax 6 very soon.
decidet to grab empathy later

edit.: since my homesystem had only one tiny planet next to my HW i decidet it would not be a production system and overpopulated the hw aswell as the dwarf to 100%
proceedet with the rest of my planets in the same way except for 1 system that ahd 3 very nice planets

got raided by morrigi survey fleets, and was shocked about the fact that i didnt see them coming at all or 1 turn before they hit, the birds Fusion FTL with gravboats posed a huge threat.

unable to put up defense on all of my systems i decided to hit the first enemy colony i found. Birds CR's got shreded as expected, and the colony was dead.
so far so god, but bad things where about to happen soon....

[Mecron]

epic stuff guys!

[FireStorm20]

epic stuff guys!

Thanks:) even more imho interesting stuff coming soon, as soon as i find time:)

[FireStorm20]

Ok here comes chapter 2 (btw if anyone besides Mecron reads it and enjoy feel free to comment, dont know if anyone reads this )


Chapter 2 - Apocalypse Now

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Im gonna change style a bit, simple story this time . This part of the game was long enough ago that its really blurry in my memory, and its easier for me to just retell it in simple manner, whatever i can remember. I might confuse some events, so BlueInstinct , feel free to correct me:)
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I remember having some plans rolling when it happned but after the bitter deafeat all the plans were put on hold in face of one: stop the battleriders:).
The answer was quite obvious, as Blueinstinct told me this himself on our last game, light emmiters.I was fearing a trap from BluInstinct (I start massproducing LE fitted ships,
he throws well armored battle CRs... ) , but it didnt happen.

Tornado class cruiser. (tornado ->light emmiters looks like lighting:))


The new Tornado Ship accomplished its minimum goal but not much more: it killed BRs efficiently, but god, did it suck against regular CRs.It was the first time i ever used LE, and really,
They just cant punch through anything hvier then BRs.So i usually with the first fleet killed all BRs and maybe 1 carrer, I needed a whole second fleet to kill the puny carrers, and after Ii had maybe 2-3 ships left alive .But here my economic prowess started showing itself: even tough I had no chance 1-1, I could throw fleet after fleet.Thats when the balance that lasted more or less the whole game formed: Blueinstinct had nearly alwys hvy tech/performance edge, while i could throw wave after wave. It was all time quality versus quantity. The ratio was from ~2 to 1 in Blueinsticts favour, and when the ratio neared 1 , BlueInstinct was usually in trouble...

After a few battles and failed assaults on both sides (the primary battlefields planets that endured through the whole game alos began to emerge,Galliandro on my side and Pacem on BlueInstincts.By now there must be a belt around the planets made out of ship wrecks, dozens of battles weere fought around each of these planets....) ,It became clear we reached a stalemate. And while it might sound even , i knew i was in trouble: while we squabbled here, BlueInstinct could colonize the arm and slowly begin to close the econimc gap , which would mean my death.

I am still damn proud of my plan to counter that situation, i think it was waht allowed me to last that long : Ok, i cant punch trough, but i can stop trying to punch, for a while, save money that i used to replace my ships , and build 2 cheap fleets of super endurance and durability, full of assault suttles, that can sneak behind his defence lines. Also i didnt think Blueisntinct coudl have the money to maintain that Pacem defense, Galliandro attacks, and at same time home defense fleets.


The propheticly named "Apocalypse Now" assault cruiser class



After researching laser pd , which was critcal to assualt well developed ,missile spamming, planets, the apocalypse fleets were born:
4 "Apocalypse now" ships (assault)
2 reapair
3 supply ships
1 gravboat

On home defence front the Tornado class got a little upgrade to correct the laughable effectivness against normal CRs , more x-ray lasers, less LE , but some pd to compensate against BRs:

Tornado mk3 class cruiser.



While continuing to defend around galliandro, i sent the 2 fleets when rdy : 1 towards the BI homesystems, higher risk, one towards the middl/end of the arm, to raze any emerging colonies.

The mission became a totall sucess:

Even if i got chased from one planet, i could usally jump to another nearby (7,2 ly) while BI fleets needed usually 2 turns to close in (5 ly).So it lasted i think around 8-12 turns ( thats how long those fleets could go on without ressuplying behind enemy lines), my ships just jumping around and bombing whatever was undefended.I think i managed to kill in total on those 2 missions 4-5 planets, 1 being a begining planet.i also believe Blusinstinct had to invest hvily to create fast defense fleets deep inside his territory.

While that was a total success, i began to pay for my starting good planet luck: here comes the freaking tech rolls.

Seeing that BI played it straight with the BRs and expecting him to go to BC's next, my idea was to go with fusion burst torps: So far in our prev game i alwys went with melee weapons and the BCs seem to have relatevely low small slots count, which meant low PD, even if BI would start to use it (he hadnt so far).So it should be surprisng and effective.

Unfortunately while i researched standard fusion torps ok , the roll for detonating torps (leads to burst) was 1%. Grrrrr time lost and was left with a tech that any pd can negate.

I had not much options left: i needed weapon upgrades fast.So f**k sruprise, lets go with beamers->phasers path.Its effective and morrigi got ultra high chances for them.I prodused a few fleets of torp ships anyway , just to confuse Blusinstinct: Let him produce ship with PD, let him think i went fusion burst, then hit him with pure melee power, when his ships have wasted low slots.

LongWing class cruiser (more deceit then real power)


Ok so lets tech up fast those devastating phasers . Up to blue beamers ok, phasers feasibility -> 1%.(i had as Morrigi 95 % accoridng to wiki)



As alwys, would love to hear your side BI

To be continued ......

[Selak]

i love reading this kind of stuff.

It gives me ideas on different things to do to in different games. Im actually slowboating my way through a game as liir right now using ideas i picked up from reading these kinds of battle report/AAR from between you two.

[BlueInstinct]

Report arround turn 90

The battles have been murcyless, the morrigi ships sloughtered by the hundreds, but for each ship i kill, 2 more will come back.
Still, i am on the offensive, the bordersystem Peck is secured and the close by morrigi system under heavy preasure.






Dn research finished just about that time and my first Wave Class ships are being throwen at the birds




But at turn 99 the sensors picked up a Morrigi fleet passing through the border territory, its curse: the Liir Homesystem
and even though i spotted it at least 20 lightyears away from Muur it moved at a frightening speed.

my closest combat fleet was on Peck, wich was way too far off, so i dispatched some reserves from a closer location, wich would still take 4 truns to arrive.
So the gouvernor of muur initiated heavy overhaveresting to get out the newely prototyped DN class as fast as possible.
1 turn later it was clear that the morrigi fleet was only 1 trun away from its destination, and my reserves still 3 truns away



The fleet consisted mostly of assaultshuttles and managed to kill many liir, but eventually was driven out, but it didnt return home, it proceedet to strike the next liir world, wich was completely defenseless.

The liir lost 2 worlds in that process, one of wich was a starting system. Loseing it meant losing the starting province including my HW, wich decreased the alrdy rather puny trade income even more.
and once i recolonised the system, it turned out that the starting province couldnot be reformed. the distance between the worlds was too big.

in order to make the homeworld part of a province again i would need to researche enhanced jusistication. That left a bitter taste in my mouth.
the only thing that went well during that period was the early breakthrough of the battlecruiser technology....

[FireStorm20]

thanks for comment Selak and thanks for your side of the story BI:).

Very nice pics:)

As soon as i have again more time will continue...

[Karu]

I would love to see the BR and BC fittings.

And that kind of 2 sides AAR is fun to read.


Sincerly

[DarkEzeal]

It is a very interesting read as you get both sides of the coin in one go. Down side to this is that the other player(s) can read what the other(s) are doing or have in mind and plan off that. Unless they give vague ideas (the readers wont like that ), they trust the other side not to read, or the info their giving out is outdated and both side know it anyways. Maybe that's just me I whole heartily agree I'm very paranoid. I mean, my avatar describes me perfectly

[FireStorm20]

It is a very interesting read as you get both sides of the coin in one go. Down side to this is that the other player(s) can read what the other(s) are doing or have in mind and plan off that. Unless they give vague ideas (the readers wont like that ), they trust the other side not to read, or the info their giving out is outdated and both side know it anyways. Maybe that's just me I whole heartily agree I'm very paranoid. I mean, my avatar describes me perfectly

Sure , information is power, specially in this game.We even when we chatted after each session refused to divulge some info to each other.

But what we describe here is long long in the past.This intel cant really hurt any of us.We are at the moment at a pinnacle point of late dread with AM era, just before LV era.So its much later.

[Hawawaa]

Hey you jerks I'm seeing a lot more pics on your steam page, post more here stop holding out on us.

Good stuff!

[FireStorm20]

Hey you jerks I'm seeing a lot more pics on your steam page, post more here stop holding out on us.

Good stuff!

thanks.I have no hidden pics tough.I had an idea about frapsing and then editing an epic video, but the perfocmance droppped to low, i feared i was loosing frames...And i want to win more then to make an epic video, so stopped recording:)

BTW started writing the last chapter until we play again with BI , coming soon (prolly weekend)

[FireStorm20]

Ladies, gentleman , and aliens of exotic genders:)

Here comes part 3 named : (mainly because i coudlnt come up with anything else and i loved the game that had this name:) )

Chapter 3 - The Darkening


My recolaction is really disjointed but here it is as I remember it, starting with some critical moments that happened around this time of the game:

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I remember one of the first Lir Dread fleets assaulting Galliandro and having only my old type FarWing and Tornado ships to defend. I think I sent 3 waves which got slaughtered , but damaged the BI fleet enough that next turn the spam of my remaining drone platforms (i think around 6 close to each other ) and planet missiles forced him to retreat (those dreads hadnt any PD yet and were rly hvily damaged).

Another critcal moment: BI fleet managed to kill my first defence fleet and got near my Galliandro planet and naval station in first turn of combat, and on second turn my second defence fleet raced with the incoming BlueInstict BC's to intercept them before they reached and destroyed the naval station (which could mean the end of this planet).I managed to catch them just before they came into range of the station, saving it by seconds...Adrenaline moment:)

Around this time my first real combat ship entered the service ,The Space Hawk (the previous ones i considered more like desperation driven designs, slapping on them whatever I had. This one at last had some sort of balance and completeness ).


Space Hawk class cruiser, first real combat ship.Fried a respectable number of fishes.



While very disspointingly, as one might remember from prev chapter, it didnt have phasors, it featured improved magnoceramic armour , and having noticed BI reliance on basic green beamers and mostly x-ray lasers, it had the just researched reflective coating, which i think helped a lot .For weapons it mounted mainly the new blue beamers,particle beams, but also a few LE just in case of BR.It performed pretty admirably and allowed me to hang on against the intensfying wave of Liir Dread carrers with BCs.I even remember one of the first Space Hawk fleets managed to get to one of the Pacem planets and bomb it a tiny bit, before being driven out the next turn by another Liir fleet.

I tried another Apocalypse fleets run, but BI , having learned the lesson, had left defense fleets, and it effectivness was nearly nullified. I managed to bomb near to death one planet thanks to some sneaky maneovring , but lost most of the ships in the 2 fleets.

Meanwhile the Liir BC's must have gotten some serious upgrades, cause my Space Hawks began again to drop like flies.

Again a last ditch effort ship was born, aptly named "Hope", which managed to stop the onslaught and performed better then i hoped (i would say the exchange ratio got down again to around 1.3), washing the victory smile from BlueInstainct face , who i think alrdy was planing what kind of swiming pool he will install on my homeworld capital:).


Hope class dreadnought, which inded managed to stop the Liir onslaught and to give me hope.



Its CnC equivalent, WingCommander class CnC dread




Failed again a couple of techs, just to keep feeling the blues: mechempathy, holographic tactics, rapid prototyping ...

Meanwhile while i was hanging on , somtimes by a thread, on the border, with the stopping of the Apocalypse fleets I couldnt stop BI expansion of the arm anymore and knew he was prolly in a colonizing frenzy out there.I knew it was bad , but i just couldnt do anything about it for the moment

At around this point i think we went different long term tech aims: while I aimed for flagship Command and HLC paths ,BI went AM.During that time a new design was developed, planned as my future backbone:

The Crimson Eagle class advanced cruiser, named for the colour of its 5 lancers blasts:



Might seem suprrising i went back to cruisers from dreads , but my idea was that a shielded cruiser with the amazing Morrigi blazer section (5 HCL mounts) shoudl prove more effective then dreads.One big challenge in designing those HCL shield cruisers for morrigi is energy, you really have not enough.Thats the only reason why its got 2 obsolete plasma cannons, they eat much less energy then double blue beamers in med slots.

Altough in the first incarnation pure combat wise it did seem to perform only slightly better then Hope class it had one big advantage: it was faster. Blueinstict usual tactic was to send BCs first, then put the dreads at maxiumum firing range as support fire, runing of at first sight they are getting attacked (specially after being to cocky and loosing one to my Hope ships ).This worked pretty well against slower, short reange weaponized, Hope dreads, but stopped to work that great against Crimson Eagle:they were faster, more maneavrable, and had much longer range with lancers.Lir dreads started to die , and if he didnt support with the dreads the bcs to keep the dreads safe, the bcs lost. For some time our egangements were a game of him trying to support with dreads while keeping them safe, and me trying to catch dreads while not loosing firepower on only damaging them. Such occurences , when I lost battle time firing at dreads which managed to get away,while getting pounded by the bcs, ended in hvy losses for me and minimal for BI , so that tactic also had its dangers.

While we both continued teching up, there came a short period of slowing down of the so far non stop fighting....wich was soon followed by even greater carnage with even deadlier toys: BI started with his first AM fleet, striking at galliandro within 0 turns. He landed tough next to my fresh flagship lead GreatWing fleet, which , with moderate losses, but managed to win the day.Encouraged by the success i ordered a fullscale attack on Pacem, where... i got pretty much slaughtered (tough imho mostly due to my silly tactical decisions.).


GreatWing flagship, my first flagship class design. Was critical in the ongoing fight.



Sorry because of the still important combat involvement of this design, its details are calssified:).Will post them when they will no longer threaten the victory of the Morrigi race:)

Anyway while it looked our teching and scheming resulted in same stalemate we tried to break , BI ,blast him, tried something new and clever: instead on continuing storming the fortified Pacem, he used his new AM speed and headed for my deeper inside my territory vital system of Unicron , bypassing my border hvily defended systems. I had some old ships there,+ some freshly produced new ones, which mixed made some semi serious defence fleet. Sent a a fleet to reinforce but the system would have to survive 1 turn of attack without it.

After a furious battle, the planet hold on and i was alrdy sighting in relief: my full strengh fleet arrived.And ofc here comes the fail:I even had 2 fleets to defend, 1 the full strengh new one, 1 the mixed defense fleet.So thinking the AI will place the new arrived patrolling fleet at the biggest planet, i choose the arriving full fleet as defender.OFC it got placed at another planet, and the endangered planet was left alone for the Liir to comfortably bomb to ashes:(.

Next turn my fleet chased off the fishes , but the dmg was done a class 9 planet was killed.

Meanwhile i continued my Crimson Eagle development plan: the aim now was to get cutting beams, which needed AM first.After researchign AM, i started a feasibility study on cutting beams, and surprise suprise : 1% (according to wiki i had 90 % as morrigi).@#!@#@#$#$@@#$.Sweet.So i tried AM torps ->15%.So maybe more defense shield mk3 ->5 % This was getting ridicoulous, i had a red mark on my face because of facepalming ....




On this facepalming accent end of chapter 3, chapter 4 coming soon or a bit later:).

BI hope you write your side of the story as usuall

[DarkEzeal]

Loving it all guys, keep it coming

Hold in there FireStrom, those feasibility studies hurt but I'm rooting for you! Go Crows!