It's lonely here! (First post!)

[Hunpecked]

With regard to the Aquilaeians, I'm hoping to use my victorious cruiser fleet to re-re-capture the disputed system; the cruisers can defeat any Aquilaeian fleet I've seen so far.

As for Intel, I have no immediate plans for offensive projects; it's all I can do to hold off enemy operations. Fortunately the Narn with their research aptitude seem to be the only ones who've developed Intel so far. If I can capture some of their Intel facilities it'll be a big swing in my favor, and may be enough to defeat any Intel attacks from the other AIs.

[Hunpecked]

Update: It's Turn 82 and the balance seems to be tipping my way (for now) against the five-AI TDM team.

Pyrochette: To the west of my south-center home system, the Pyrochette have relentlessly tried to sterilize and recolonize the system I took from them 20-odd turns ago. After being down to one planet in the system, I've taken three more they had recolonized; two- and three-cruiser fleets keep dashing themselves to death against my WP, Sat, and fleet defenses. In my experience the Pyros are the weakest of my five opponents, so this is my lowest priority front for resources.

Aquilaeian: They've been very aggressive all along my northern border. They captured a spaceyard planet in one frontier system, and it took several turns to throw them out (I inadvertently glassed the planet when my fleet "sought after" enemy ships that moved over it). In the long-disputed Ikrod system they've colonized several worlds to my one. Nevertheless, I just wiped out 15 CR/LC in Ikrod and captured a nearby Aquilaeian system with three mining worlds (finally alleviating my perennial minerals crunch). I've started ferrying captured civilians to my methane worlds.

Tessellate: They were a minor presence to the northeast until a few turns ago, when they showed up in force. In three turns, three CR/LC fleets popped through two warp points into my frontier system. Fortunately most of the CRs were armed only with anti-planet weapons (napalm); though outnumbered, I easily greased 60+ ships for the loss of 11 Sats and 1 LC (rammed).

United Flora: They started out hemmed in by the Narn to the east and my territory to the west, so when I took their home system and two others it put them on the ropes. They're not gone, but I expect only token resistance.

Narn: I pushed east past the UF and took the Narn home system. They counterattacked, glassing one of their former worlds, before I could drive them out. Capturing their second system has gotten me several ships crippled, but considering they have PPB V, the Talisman, and at least one BC, resistance has been light. The most recent Narn prisoners have been Angry, so I suspect Narn morale, production, and construction are in the toilet. If so, this is the time to strike; I've given this front first priority.

It's too soon to gloat, since hordes of Talisman-wielding Tessellate may show up at any time. That I've survived this long is due to the AIs' poor offensive coordination, "creative" shipbuilding programs (fleets of planet killers helpless against ships/sats), and inability to deal with my PPBs (most AI ships still mount 1-2 ordinary shield generators instead of extra armor). Win or lose, though, this is definitely the most fun I've had against the AI so far.

[Hunpecked]

I learned a nice little lesson from the AI this weekend. Wouldn't you know, it happened when I thought *I* was being the clever one.

I had a fleet of LC/CR, a supply ship, repair ship, and troop transport (13 ships total) ready to jump into an Aquilaeian system. The previous turn I had executed a successful random "crew insurrection" Intel project, and by good luck (hah!) captured a cloaked (!) CR on the far side of the very warp point my fleet was about to transit. (I knew the Acks had Stealth armor and I had previously detected the occasional cloaked ship infiltrating my systems).

My new allies reported that the far side of the warp point was guarded only by 2 LC and 6 Sats. Haha! I had caught the poor dumb Acks napping! Gloating, I ordered my Ack CR to uncloak and engage its former comrades, and sent my fleet through the warp point. Victory would soon be mine! Muahahahaha!

In retrospect, of course I should have asked myself two questions:

(1) Why was my Ack CR cloaked when I captured it?
(2) Wasn't it an incredible coincidence that, out of the entire Aquilaeian Empire, my random Intel project captured a ship in exactly the right place?

Well, I'm sure the Space Empires veterans reading this will know what happened next. The warp point was actually guarded by an additional BC and 22 CR, all cloaked. This fleet must have been a substantial part of the Ack navy, making a random crew insurrection more likely to strike it. Watching the turn's combat replays, I saw my liberated CR vaporized and figured my incoming fleet was doomed.

Fortunately my crews paid only a small price for their commander's stupidity. Both fleet and individual ships were generally trained to the max, all combat ships had ECM, Stealth/Scattering armor, and shields, and they were armed with deadly PPBs. After the initial close range volley, ships on both sides scattered and continued the battle at medium and long range. In the end the Aquilaeian fleet was annihilated, at the cost of two ships crippled and two lightly damaged, mostly in the first combat turn.

Taking the lesson to heart, I designed and crash-built a fast scout class with Hyper Optics and Stealth Armor. These ships will infiltrate enemy systems (only the Pyrochette have shown up with cloak detectors so far), or accompany my fleets into enemy territory. I've been slow to appreciate the potential of stealth technology in a game without mines, but I plan to make up for lost time.

[Hunpecked]

Well, I didn't make any progress over the holidays (too many relatives, too many feasts), but now that things are back to abnormal, I'm resuming my interrupted game.

It's turn 104 now, and the previous turn witnessed the biggest battle I've seen so far. As I mentioned last time, I've sent cloaked scouts into most of the enemy-controlled border systems. One of them spotted a fleet of 97 Tessellate ships (mostly CR) apparently headed for the Resshrak system, which I had recently captured. With two turns' warning, I gathered four fleets from neighboring stars, stripped most of the planets in the system, and fortified the most valuable planet (it has several captured Tessellate shrines) with 3 medium weapons platforms, four captured small missile sats, and 8 medium PPB sats.

On the third turn, the enemy fleet did indeed attack the expected target. On the replay, the enemy fleet packed into the northeast corner of the tactical map; my sats were to their west, and my fleets (40 LC, CR, & BC, 1 BB) were deployed around the planet. Despite my defensive efforts, my ships were still outnumbered about 2 to 1.

Unfortunately for the Tessellate, they had learned nothing from previous encounters; their fleet consisted almost entirely of napalm-armed planet killers. They were tough and heavily armored, to be sure, but they had no way of hurting my ships other than ramming. Worse, they inexplicably passed up nearly all their (rare) ramming opportunities. Even then they might have scorched the planet with sheer numbers, but for some reason the main body headed south, passing east of the planet, apparently just to ram my lone repair space station.

With the station gone, the six survivors finally turned to my world, but they were vaporized instantly. The combat ships were gone by turn eight; the don't-get-hurt ships lasted until turn 20. For the loss of 97 ships, the Tessellate destroyed one space station and inflicted negligible damage on one supply ship.

I'm at a loss to explain the poor performance of the Tessellate in the game so far. I can only speculate that the expensive tech option has hit them harder than the other AIs. Perhaps they'll rally later.

On the western front, I've located the Pyrochette home world; in a few turns I should have enough troops assembled to take it. To the northwest the Aquilaeians are fielding fleets of 20 to 30 battlecruisers each, but I'm capturing 1-2 per turn via Intel and slowly capturing more worlds. The Tessellate to the northeast are weakened after their disaster in Resshrack.

To the east, in Zanthris, two Narn worlds are still holding out, guarded by 60 and 71 sats, respectively. Assuming Talisman sats, PPBs, and a few weapons platforms, it would probably cost me several ships each to take them out by direct attack. Instead, I'm going to try launching large numbers of my own sats over these worlds and see if they can do the job.

The victory condition in this game is a 300% lead over the second place empire. With the Acks and Tessies still pretty much intact, it looks like the game will go on for some time.

[Hunpecked]

I'm still making slow progress on this game.

It's turn 114. I've captured the Pyrochette home world and set it to work building Terran battleships. My fleets are mopping up the remaining Pyro systems on the west side of the map. To the north and northwest I continue capturing Aquilaeian systems; so far their counterattacks have been ineffective. To the east I've had little trouble capturing Narn, United Flora, and Tessellate worlds. In the last few turns I've seen one UF ship and no Narn; I suspect their few remaining worlds are rioting by now.

In the Zanthris system I launched dozens of sats over one sat-protected Narn planet, but unfortunately after several turns they haven't engaged the 60 sats around the main planet or the weapon platforms on the ground. On the bright side, they did wipe out the Narn fighters and both moons. Since the game apparently won't permit sat-to-sat combat, I'm building a couple of missile battlecruisers to take out the Narn planets from long range. The Narn sats can stay there for the rest of the game as far as I'm concerned.

The Tessellate have made a comeback of sorts. When one of their ships popped through a warp point (and was immediately destroyed by guardian sats), I found that they were finally building battlecruisers and had developed the Talisman and shard cannons. Now I see a fleet of 128(!) Tessellate ships (including a few of their new BC) passing through a disputed frontier system. We may soon have a battle that will dwarf the epic fight of turn 103.

I just hope I finish this game before SE V comes out.

[Hunpecked]

Victory! I got the announcement when the computer finished running turn 117. I was surprised, because the Aquilaeans and Tessellate still had nearly 250 colonies between them.

That turn I captured nearly a dozen enemy colonies, but I suspect it was the fleet action in Tyrik that tipped the balance. The large Tessellate fleet I mentioned in my last post moved into Tyrik, one jump from Resshrak (scene of the last big battle on turn 103). I gathered five fleets (65 ships total) and a number of sats to defend the most valuable colony in the system, but the enemy chose instead to re-capture the adjacent planet. So on turn 117 I sent all 5 fleets to attack the 129 Tessellate ships (almost all CR, and almost all armed only with planetary napalm).

Some of our ships started out intermingled, and six of mine spent most of the battle completely surrounded. Whenever possible the Tessellate closed to 1-square range, but the only ramming I saw was when 4 CR rammed one of my battleships (it survived with 68% damage). Otherwise it was a slaughter: 129 Tessellate ships destroyed vs. 1 Terran battleship damaged.

A few sectors away, another Tyrik colony with several captured shrines was threatened by a 15-ship Tessellate fleet. Wanting to save the shrines, I dumped thirty-odd sats backed up by a battleship and three battlecruisers. Unfortunately ten of the Tessellate were Talisman-equipped battlecruisers with shield depleters and shard cannons. Worse, my sats were out of position, and worse still, the enemy got the first shot. Fortunately my ships knocked off several Tessellate and lasted long enough to lure the enemy into my sats. The planet and all four ships survived, the latter with only one component each.

On top of that, having burned through Tessellate counter-intel the previous turn, I captured three Talisman battlecruisers via crew insurrection. All in all the Tessellate lost over 150 ships in that turn.

Final score was Terrans 6.1 million, Tessellate 1.4 million, Aquilaeians 0.7 million. The Narn and Pyrochette had two colonies each, and the United Flora had been completely liberated.

This was quite an exciting game in the early stages, but it appears that even at five to one odds with a small bonus and no mines, the human player still has the edge. I'm thinking of going again but with everyone breathing the same air; I gained a major advantage by matching captured populations with the proper atmosphere. I like expensive tech but I hate the Talisman; I may mod the Talisman down to a super combat sensor (e.g. 100-120% accuracy, but subject to ECM, etc.).

Or I may wait for SE V.

[Suicide Junkie]

It sounds like you need a challenge.
How about some Carrier Battles mod?

Grab v1.5, and you will find that on No Bonus setting, the AIs are powerful adversaries, and even the Neutrals are scary!

[Hunpecked]

I'm tempted. I appreciate a good challenging AI. Problem is, I detest the concept of space fighters as seen in such sci fi productions as "Star Wars", "Battlestar Galactica", and "Babylon 5". The futuristic space carrier is supposedly analogous to the 20th Century aircraft carrier; however, since all spacecraft operate in the same medium, it's actually more like a 20th Century "PT boat carrier". I'm just not excited by the idea of "patrol boats in space".

In fact, I'm thinking of removing all fighter tech from the next game, just so the AIs don't waste any of their efforts on it. In the last game (stock + TDM) it didn't do them any good, anyway.

[Suicide Junkie]

A better equivalent would be choppers, I think.

Quick, manoeuverable, and fairly easy to replace when lost in combat.
Particularily compared to capital ships, which are slow, long ranged, tough, and very expensive.

---

By the way, don't let the name fool you.
Carrier Battles mod is about BALANCE, not fighters.
The fact that fighters and missiles are useful is a side-effect of the balance.

You may want to keep an eye on the PBW game "Carrier-Free Battles mod #1", and sign up as a replacement, should anyone have RL troubles.

I think I'll open a second CFB game too...


PS:
In CB#3 game, I use fleets composed of about 10% carriers, 30% Missile ships, 30% point defense, and 30% Assault ships (short range/high power, direct fire guns)

Eorg went a little nuts, building only carriers. That worked for a while, because he was a Disposable Society (double build rate), and he put his foot down with overwhelming force. However, the rest of us quickly learned to build a lot of antifighter designs... AF missiles, 40mm torpedoes, cluster missiles.
When Eorg failed to modify his own designs (IE use a mix of gunboats and missile ships, instead of all-fighters) to counter our new fighter-killers, he was defeated.
His carriers often got away, since we had little anti-ship firepower, but he was losing thousands of fighters in every battle, culminating in a big 300-ship vs 5000-fighter clash, which finally broke his navy.

The point to all this, is fighters are quite useful, but certainly not sufficient, and not completely nessesary.
The same can be said of ships, missiles, direct fire weapons, just about anything in CB.
The best fleet will have a healthy mix of everything, with strategies set so that the different types of ships and fighters support each other; covering each others' weaknesses, and clearing the way for their strengths.

With such a fleet, I recently defeated a 400 ship fleet which was over-fightered, over missiled, under-PD'd, and very lacking in direct-fire assault ships.

[Hunpecked]

Interesting. Maybe I will look into it.

One question: Would the AIs be disadvantaged if I took mine and fighter techs out of a CB game?