A Legends induced squeeze

[RaffleSnaffle]

Lovin' this! Super fast paced action action action AAR FTW!

[Gelatinous Cube]

I notice you changed the picture sizes! Much better! I am very much enjoying this AAR. Keep it up!

[Jim D Burns]

With high war weariness in my empire, I look over my planets and discover the least happy planet I own is still at +7 happiness, so I guess my worries about a civil war are unfounded. At least for now, I guess its possible discontent shall continue to grow.



A few months later I’m pleasantly surprised to learn another wonder has been built on my home planet. This is the 2nd one I’ve managed to complete, though I had no idea it had even been queued up for construction.



I swear this game is out to get me lol. Things had been sailing along quietly for the first time in a long time. In fact over a year had passed without any major fighting going on, so I decided to reorganize my fleets.

I had just re-designed most of the current designs for my military vessels and sent everything to the yards for a refit. About a month after this, I was busy re-designating my fleet structure and clicked through a pop-up message by accident.

I go into the message log to see what it was and see this:



I have no idea where they are and hope they had been spotted in some far off corner of the map. Unfortunately for me, their first appearance is at a space station sitting in open space that had been located at a pulsing ring by my explorers early in the game.

They make quick work of the station which is just a short hop north of my Zentabia fluid colony of Varunat Prime 1.




A short time later the pirate fleet arrives at Varunat Prime 1 and the attack begins. There is a large capital ship, a carrier and three cruisers in this fleet, it is going to be a very tough job to destroy it, but tech levels have increased significantly since the first phantom pirates appeared in game, so I should be able to deal with them eventually.




Unfortunately the price I pay for choosing to refit my ships at this particular moment is rather high. If the pirates do get to build additional ships based on what they destroy, they are going to probably field a whole new fleet after this haul. Everything in this system was destroyed in a matter of seconds..



The latest summary screen shows war weariness has gone to rampant. I have no idea how bad it can get, but I refuse to pay money to end the war. Once the current refits are completed I’ll head west and start squishing a few bugs.

The 20 listed carriers have been redesigned into very large carriers. I’ve redesigned them so each one has 12 fighter bays aboard. I’ll create 4 different fleets, each one centered around 5 carriers. That’ll be 240 fighters from the carriers plus whatever fighters the cruiser escorts add to the mix. There should be some epic battles soon.


Jim

[Gelatinous Cube]

Very nice! Those pirates can be nasty, but there are massive benefits to be had from destroying their base. I once destroyed three in two years, and was rewarded with nearly all the phaser tech.

[Jim D Burns]

As the game was chugging along, I double clicked a message and went to a reported attack and saw the largest Ardilus I’ve yet seen in game. Unfortunately I was unable to press print screen fast enough before it jumped away from the gas giant planet it was hovering over to appear here near my merchant ship. The thing was almost as large as the gas giant planet it started near, and as you can see here it is larger than a normal sized planet.

This attack occurred over one year ago in game. The thing is still around and attacks any merchants that enter the system. Though its health is never 100% that I’ve seen, it is usually between 40%-70%. So my guess is the rodents simply can’t kill it fast enough before it forces their military ships to flee.



The new phantom Pirates must be causing some serious pain in the galaxy besides what they’ve done to me. These two events happened within a month of each other. While the Savage Claws only had 4 ships and their base, the Urd Trase had 16 ships and their base.

I immediately sent all the pirates to the scrapyards to see what tech advantage I could glean from the ships.





When war first broke out, I sent the two spies I started the game with on low risk one year long missions to steal territory maps so their stats would get revealed. Unfortunately one of them died and I am now paying the price for only having one spy left to put on counter-intelligence missions.





As you can see, Esari Kalan is nothing to write home about in the intelligence business. I just wish I could get more spies, but although I’ve gotten lots of other leader types, no spies have appeared at all.



Before all my ships could finish upgrading, chaos erupts in the galaxy and I find myself at war with even more empires. Thankfully war weariness seems to have topped out at rampant and I haven’t suffered any rebellions as yet.



It appears the phantom pirates have run out of targets. This large fleet centered on a carrier took up residence in the Paakri system (the system just west of my Zentabia fluid system) and hasn’t moved out in quite some time.



All the above occurred over about 2 years of game time. Yet still my fleets have not completely finished the upgrades I have been waiting on. I can only assume the lack of any shipyards in the southern part of my empire is what has caused this massive backlog delay.

Taking advantage of the fact I had little or no military presence left near my Zentabia fluid planet, the Sluken’s invade and capture the place. I had tried to build up a land army, but as you can see they brought plenty of troops to get the job done.



All is not lost however, as my long awaited upgrades are finally nearing completion. Here you see my newly organized Southern Fleet. It’s fully operational and fueling for the trip south to deal with the Pirate menace.

There are three more fleets identical to this one (Northern, Western and Eastern), but they all have a few ships still waiting to finish upgrades. Once they are done I’ll be able to deal out some serious pain to my enemies.



My assault fleet isn’t quite ready even now, but should hopefully be ready to follow up behind the Southern Fleet once it has cleared out major military resistance from the south.


Jim

[Whydmer]

[X(] Holy Cr@p! your assault fleet dwarfs mine.  In fact all your fleets do but this one by a mile or two. (Great AAR btw)

[Gelatinous Cube]

Indeed! Anyone reading this who has also read mine must surely note that your Empire is MASSIVE. This is how I like to play my games, but the idea of trying to do an AAR of such a big map was too daunting. I am impressed! You can get bet I'm taking some notes, as offensive strategy is my weakest part of the war game.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Whydmer

[X(] Holy Cr@p! your assault fleet dwarfs mine.  In fact all your fleets do but this one by a mile or two. (Great AAR btw)

I designed the huge assault fleet due to the size of the map. I wanted staying power so the fleet could stay on campaign for quite a while before the need to return to re-embark more ground troops was necessary. I’ll have supply ships following the fleets to keep them in fuel, so ground troops were the only limiting factor for campaign length I could see.

I’ve found on a map this size (15 x 15 sectors) it can literally take well over a year to go back to home territory and get back out to the fight. So my thinking is if I bring enough troops with the fleet and make the fleet large enough that lost ships will be rare, I can stay on campaign for quite a while.

The need to leave some troops behind on conquered planets to defend them will be mitigated by the fact the troops will become stronger and stronger the more they fight. So hopefully I’ll only need one or two return trips for the entire war.

Jim

[Tophat1815]

Well I have had no issue with your post sizing and frankly even if i had this one is so good its worth jumping through hoops to read! Great AAR Jim! 

[Jim D Burns]

Not long after the capture of my Zentabia Fluid planet, the Sluken fleet arrives at the Paakri system and begins to land troops on Paakri 1. Initially only a few troops are landed, but more and more troop transports warp into system until it is obviously too many to resist. The planet falls about 3-6 months after this screenshot:



The Sluken fleet then leaves and is seen no more and at first I’m a bit mystified as there is a second less populous planet in the system they did not invade. But my puzzlement gets its answer a few months later.

This is the first of two failed attempts to use intelligence operations to grab control of my planet. I say failed in that the planet remains in my hands still, both operations were successful in increasing my unrest level. The second attempt saw unhappiness drop to -14 and I thought it was sure to succeed, but unhappiness recovered before any rebel units appeared. If this keeps up though, eventually I’ll lose the planet.



Early in game my explorers discovered a Desolation Moon project. It has been so long ago I had completely forgotten about it. I spotted the name on map while scrolling past recently and zoomed in to have a look and was pleasantly surprised. Looks like I’ll have a death star soon to add to my fleet.



My explorers found a few very well positioned supply depots deep in the heart of enemy space. Here you see the first base is already claimed and its scanners reveal that quite a few enemy fleets are in the area. The next supply base is near the Sciibu system and my ship can be seen moving in to take control of it. It will extend scanner range deep into enemy territory. All the advanced ships around the two supply bases are sent into the scrap yard and stripped for tech.



As I type this, the date in game is 2800.07.12 and my big fleets have yet to venture into enemy space. I had them all on auto control and assumed the AI would move them to the assembly systems I had assigned as their home bases. But they were all still patrolling around the same gas mines they were at 2 years ago, so I have recently taken manual control and ordered them into position.

The four supply fleets (one will go with each fleet) which were ordered manually long ago are all already in position and mining gas in the assembly systems, so once the battle fleets arrive they should be able to top off fuel and head into combat with minimal delay.



As for the Silvermist’s reported on originally about 12 years ago game time. I am still constantly getting reports of attacks in the same systems north/northeast of my empire and many of the systems have 3 or 4 mists in them when I check. Even so, they do not seem to be spreading anywhere beyond the area they were first reported in.

I haven’t had time to finish cleaning them out, but I did manage to clean them out of the systems in and around the system they were first sighted in. As you can see from the below map, I know own Nar Shaddos and several of the area systems around it and haven’t had any trouble with Silvermist’s returning to the area yet.



I am pretty disappointed in the behavior of the Silvermist’s, or I should say lack of activity. Had they continued to spread back when techs were low, they could have easily consumed a huge chunk of my empire. But their self restricted behavior in only haunting a few systems has allowed me to survive without taking any serious damage from them other than the loss of the occasional colony ship or destroyer.

If this behavior is intentionally coded into the game to limit their effect, I’d ask that an option be added to the starting parameters menus so players can choose to have them be totally free ranging, with the ability to consume the entire map if not stopped somehow.

Below is a large screenshot of all the current victory levels. My military value skyrocketed once all my existing large space ports refitted with the Super Laser’s with their firepower ratings of 30,000! I wish there was a way to exclude the effect of those super lasers on your military rating so you could get a better idea of how the different empires fleet strengths compared. Perhaps a new line/tab for base power and the old one just covers ship power?

Until very recently, the Combined Atuuk Alliance had a larger population than I did, but it has constantly been declaring war on my allies of late, so has lost some territory to them over the last few years.

What amazes me is how far ahead I’ve grown in total colonies. It’s as if the AI powers have stopped colonizing or something. My empire has grown larger over the past 12 years, but for the most part all the new colonies except a few are due to exotic planets I already controlled being colonized by new races that have grown populations within my empire large enough to start building colony ships for me.

Do AI powers prohibit non-core races from building colony ships for them? Because it appears they have all pretty much remained the same size as they were when I started this AAR, and I haven’t touched colony handling, it’s totally AI controlled for me, yet I’ve grown by almost 30 colonies during the same time frame.



Jim

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Tophat1812

Well I have had no issue with your post sizing and frankly even if i had this one is so good its worth jumping through hoops to read! Great AAR Jim! 

Thanks Tophat, glad you're enjoying the read. But the first post had a full map screenshot (it's a link now) that was huge compared to everything else I've posted. That was causing the forum to auto-correct for image size and text was running off screen far to the right and readers had to use scroll bars to move the screen back and forth to read each line. So their reactions were understandable, especially those people who have small monitors.

Jim

[RaffleSnaffle]

(Looks at all your graphs then finally notices your military strength...)

Oh.My.Ghod.

[Grotius]

What a fun read! Makes me want to try a massive game too.

[Gelatinous Cube]

Wow, look at that military disparity! Highest i've ever seen the AI's Military Strength go is 36,000(Not counting Shakturi), but those dudes just aren't even close

[Jim D Burns]

With my and other AI empires auto-colony systems continually trying to colonize Atalgoy and other systems nearby Atalgoy, the number of Silvermists is steadily growing. I’d estimate that there have been at least 6 or more of my colony ships lost here along with half a dozen or so escorting destroyers. Yet the Silvermists do not seem to be spreading out further into space.




Enemy intelligence operatives continue to wreak havoc among my installations. This is the 4th of what now has reached 6 bases blown up so far by agents of my enemies.




YES! Need I say more lol?




Finally, with a little manual control kick start, my offensive can begin. The first target is the re-conquest of my Zentabia fluid planet Varunat Prime 1. I immediately queue up a large space port to lure back any remaining phantom pirate fleets in the area to come face my Southern battle fleet. My Assault fleet moved on to retake Paakri 1 as well before heading to a nearby unoccupied system to refuel at the supply fleet.




A short time later I get warnings of pirates invading Arlease. Initially I’m very worried, as a quick check shows lots of pirate cruisers on their way to the undefended system. This had been where my southern fleet was based prior to moving south to retake Varunat Prime 1. Now just a few small ships and the large space port are all that remain on defense.




But recent tech upgrades mean I have nothing to fear. As the pirates warp in, they are quickly dispatched by the Space ports defenses and nothing in system is lost to them.




Then some pirates begin to arrive in Varunat Prime 1’s system. If you ever wanted to know what 280 fighters looked like, here they are moving in to attack a cruiser.




And a few seconds later, boom. Not a single weapon was needed from the larger fleet vessels, the fighters ripped through the cruiser in a matter of seconds.




I’ve been having real issues trying to get my supply ship that moved south with the Southern and Assault fleets to stay deployed on the gas giant I ordered it to deploy on. This is the second time I’ve had to order it back to the giant. Both times I found it and its escorts near the asteroid belt in system.




So after messing with the home base and defense settings so no base was set and orders to defend target only were set, it finally stayed put. And a nice thing to see is the manually controlled Assault fleet which had orders to orbit the gas giant immediately moved to refuel itself with no prompting from me. Thanks for this wonderful new behavior Codeforce and matrix.




Given that things have become so obviously over-powered in my favor, I think I’ll call the game here. I doubt the Shakturi will be able to challenge me, and at this point reaching the victory conditions is simply an exercise in repetitive behavior as my fleet hops from one system to the next.

I started this AAR when it appeared the Silvermist combined with the phantom pirates were really going to knock me back on my heels. But the fact the Silvermists never headed south into my core territory meant my bases were able to continue operating normally and eventually my tech and fleet size was able to overcome the pirates.

Had the mists come south, I could have lost half or more of my systems to them before I could have stopped them, if I could ever have stopped them. So I’d love to see a tweak to Silvermist behavior to allow it to spread much more aggressively than it does now (optional of course). If it even does spread at all, I’m not sure it does spread right now.

Jim

[Blueberry]

An excellent AAR, Jim. The game's sheer scale made it absolutely grand to read. I would like once again note that the latest patch's feature of manually controlled ships automatically refueling themselves properly is absolutely priceless. I control everything myself so that certain factor saves me a lot of tetchy micromangement. [;)]

Since I am a performance nut, out of curiosity and, indeed, for future reference in my own gaming, how was your machine handling the battle with 280 fighters deployed?

[Gelatinous Cube]

Very well done! I have seen Silvermists expand aggressively, but only in the earlier game in newly colonized regions. In the perfect storm, i've seen them depopulate 6 sectors. But they tend to fail against highly developed regions, as I don't think the Silvermist act as a group.

It would be interesting if, once a certain population of Silvermist has been reached, they began to act with one mind like an Army.

[RaffleSnaffle]

The quality of these AAR's lately is amazing and incredibly amusing to read! Great AAR WELL DONE SIR!

[feelotraveller]

Hey, well done.

I was very much looking forward to the Silvermist extermination (and not just for them...) [:(]

[Ares106]

ORIGINAL: RaffleSnaffle

(Looks at all your graphs then finally notices your military strength...)

Oh.My.Ghod.

ITS OVER 6 DIGITS!