Are you tough enough to be the "King of the Hill"?

[Gandalph]

I don't know about that. Both our previous games went well over the 100 turn mark and this one is shaping up to do the same. We are around 75 turns now and borders are still fuzzy, skirmishes are frequent, and it does not look like either one of us is powerful enough to close it out anytime soon. Always a good game with Joachim.

[Slynky]

geoschmo said:

Ouch. Sarcasm.

What's going to REALLY be a downer is when he wipes my baseships !!!

[Slynky]

Gandalph said:
I don't know about that. Both our previous games went well over the 100 turn mark and this one is shaping up to do the same. We are around 75 turns now and borders are still fuzzy, skirmishes are frequent, and it does not look like either one of us is powerful enough to close it out anytime soon. Always a good game with Joachim.

Don't take this the wrong way, Gandalph, 'cause I've only played one game with you (perhaps 2), but if you're up to turn 75 with Joachim, you should feel good! I consider Joachim to be in the top 10 players on the forum.

[geoschmo]

Slynky said:

What's going to REALLY be a downer is when he wipes my baseships !!!

It's all part of my master strategy. See when I can go up against you with my weaker economy, lower tech, fewer ships, poorer designs, and less intelligent tactics, and still beat you senseless, you will be unable to come to any other conclusion then I am just better than you.

And if you win I can just blame it on bad luck.

[Slynky]

Weaker economy? LOL...I took Gas in an FQM map. Well, I didn't know it would be an FQM map or I would have taken the usual. Not a single Gas moon to be found!

[brianeyci]

Wasup Captain Kwok. How are those little Juprupians doing?

That was a titanic battle, the first non-simulator battle I've had involving around 100 ships... er units. Well drones are ships since they can't stack. I watched the battle a few times, exhilarating.

Brian

[Slynky]

brianeyci said:
Wasup Captain Kwok. How are those little Juprupians doing?

That was a titanic battle, the first non-simulator battle I've had involving around 100 ships... er units. Well drones are ships since they can't stack. I watched the battle a few times, exhilarating.

Brian

So...enlighten us! What happened?

[Joachim]

Slynky said:

Don't take this the wrong way, Gandalph, 'cause I've only played one game with you (perhaps 2), but if you're up to turn 75 with Joachim, you should feel good! I consider Joachim to be in the top 10 players on the forum.

Blushes I am not that good. It is a very interesting game with Gandalph, will have some comments to make when it finishes!

[Slynky]

Joachim...

Told ya before and tellin' ya now. Top 10. NOW...LOL...you can try to hide your skills (so people won't be suspecting you...and I understand that...LOL). BUT, name me 10 people you think are better than you!

Now, NOT to insult anyone...but, I judge skill based on what I have seen and who I dread facing off against.

Asmala, Rex, Alneyan, and the big P come to mind right away. That leaves 6 to flesh out the 10. I won't insult anyone by mentioning names and leaving them off the list but I can readily add your name within the 10. Fyron is reputed to be good but I've never seen him play nor have I seen others rant about his ability. So, besides that unknown, I can come up with 6 other players I would worry quite abit about playing...you are one of those.

[brianeyci]

Well its the first massive battle I've had in SE:IV, so I was excited about that anyway. But it turned out to be really cool not just because of the numbers, but because of the way the battle happened and how it was fought.

In the beginning, we both expanded really quickly. It became really clear where our borders were really fast. There was one particular chokepoint where there was a black hole between my system and his. I managed to sneak a colony ship through, and build a colony with a resupply depot. Unfortunately, it wasn't a breathable planet so I couldn't stock up on enough wp, and Kwok annihilated it. That meant that whatever attack I would launch would have to include supply ships. But, I didn't know how quickly large fleets used up supplies, so when I started my attack I only included one supply ship. The biggest tactical blunder was I constructed a couple of ditch ships to try and hold the planet... I held off a couple of attacks, but the blunder was that I upgraded my original design and didn't notice that the ditch ships used MISSILES. And I was researching missiles. So when Kwok battled my missile ships on that small planet, I groaned after realizing that I had exposed my strategy. However, I had already wasted 400k research on missiles, so there was no turning back. My only hope was that he didn't pay attention to the battle.

If I had gone conventional missile boat build, it would have been over right then and there. But, I had colonized a lot of non-breathable planets, and built space yards on them to get construction bonus. I used all these small normally useless planets to build -- Drones! Tons and tons of medium sized drones, armed with plasma missile II and capital ship missile IV. So by now, I had wasted nearly 600k research on drones and missiles, I had no research into ecm or combat sensors (I'm not giving anything away by saying this, Kwok already knows =D)

So when the time to attack came, I went into the black hole system, but I took a roundabout route in hopes it would be less fortified. It paid off. I plowed through 7 mines (I had enough sweepers to take out 100), and went straight for the system where I had lost that small planet. My hopes was to hole up there, wait for a colony ship to come, build a resupply depot, and then go forward to slag his empire. But, I thought I was dead. Because I had exposed my Missile secret long ago, and Kwok surely had tons of PD.

And, Kwok did have tons of PD. Some of his destroyer designs had up to 4 PD, and that's a lot for a destroyer. But the drones came through.

(give the pictures time to load, sometimes its slow, doesn't seem to be working right at this moment)
My fleet in formation
My fleet launches drones
The first seekers launch at range 12
Looks like some are getting through
His ships come in range of my plasma missiles. About ten drones have died by now.
Five of his ships have been reduced to space dust. Many drones have died, a modest amount of drone carriers. The drones and ships that followed the strategy orders have survived, encircling Kwok's ships.
Kwok's ships veer off and try to break out of the encirclement, going after some drone carriers
Missiles pick off the stragglers
While the stragglers hold off my main drone force, the ships that managed to slip away kill off some of my isolated ships
The few ships I have left -- my minesweepers armed with only one missile, my light cruisers with six missiles have long ago perished -- take out his Last remaining fighting vessel
The writing is on the wall.

So, pretty exciting stuff. Unfortunately, that was only half of Kwok's force, and I have reason to suspect that was only a third of his force and that he's getting ready to attack in another part of my holdings. Plus, my ships will soon run out of supplies and will be helpless (its not giving away much, I'm going to fire on my own ships next turn to prevent them from becoming Juprupian target practise). The drone idea worked, but only because I had superiority in numbers, and now I'm far behind in ECM, combat sensors and conventional research, I don't know if I can catch up.

Good fight Kwok, one to be remembered.

Brian