Cluster Wars (formerly Empyrean Challenge)

[Darth Pedro]

I made a boo boo myself. I forgot the importance of the TURN SEQUENCE and had changed my Standing Orders to increase the quantity FILL TO for NMTS and METS from my OPC up to the OBC in the same turn I Assembled a huge wad of SLSU in the OBC. Thus my Space Available did not increase until AFTER the Transfers and so I filled up on one item and fell short on the other thus stopping three of my OBC Factory Groups for Consumer Goods, Life Supports and Labs. Dang It!!! The SLSU group kept on pluggin' though so I am set with a WIP stream of SLSU-3's from now on.

It's no big deal though since I can now beef up the Factory Group producing Labs and make up for it. I now have breathing room in the OBC and can let the OPC population continue to grow as I siphon off PRO's for the OBC.

In 2 turns I'll have 3,000,000+ LFS-3 complete from my OPC and will add them onto the OBC to add another 27,000,000 LFS CAPACITY there. In two turns my OPC will be maxed out at 250,000,000 population so the timing will be JUST IN TIME.

I'll probably spend a LOT of research on upgrading the LAB's as soon as I start pumping it out of the LAB-4's. Ten turns from now I will be ready to embark upon AGGRESSIVE exploration meaning going out and conquering whatever I run into and beefing it up with large scale colonization, etc.

Note: During the last game I didn't even get into the game until turn 26 and inherited a VERY large but wrecked empire which took me almost 15 turns just to recover from the downward spiral already started by what appeared to be three previous players based upon the historical NAME orders I detected in the historical Turns In files Vern gave me. This game will be MUCH better.

[Pool Boy]

I Screwed up on positioning and turn sequencing last turn for trying to bring some gear to the alien ESC in my system. No big deal though.

LArgely last turn was more maintenance, anyway.

[ixnay]

Another turn submitted just under the wire. (Over the wire, really, it was due last night. If Vern hasn't run the turn yet, then I'm ok.)

All my scouts are surveying, except 3 that are charging back into the neighboring alien system for another look.

I wanted to correct my shortage of automation up on the orbiter, but lo and behold I had shut down my automation production lines in anticipation of using that alien tech to jump-start my automation levels. So either I disassemble some of my home-world automatons to send up, or I send up an army of unskilled labor. I opted for the latter, and threw in a big hunk of steel, life support, consumer goods, and raw materials. (ARGH! Just realized I forgot about FOOD!) That should get my orbiting production lines back on track, and take a little heat off my home planet population limits.

I also set up a production run for Farm-1 -- the classic dirt farms that only run on habitable worlds. I had a bunch sitting around left over from the start of the game, so I am adding just enough new ones to fully farm-up the other habitable world in my home system. So in 4 turns when they're done, I'd better have a freighter ready to ferry them over along with several million people.

Further on that track, I boosted my Life Support tech to 4, and added some production capacity building those. That should be enough to hold me through to mid-game.

That leaves me enough research-points left over to fully exploit the Automation-10 units found on the alien outpost. It might be frivolous to burn so much research on something I could handle with existing AUT-3 tech, but the power of prototyping is too great a lure for me to resist, and I need automation. Each one of these new AUT-10 will replace a HUNDRED unskilled labor. (Incidentally, they burn no fuel, and I think they should. That's a lot of power moving around in those factories and farms -- it ought to consume power. Add that to my belief that hydroponic farms ought to consume life support, I guess...)

Finally, in a fit of indecision on what to do with excess production capacity on the home world, I am building a big batch of military robots. They're low tech, but this ought to be enough to free up my entire existing soldier force. Or I can dedicate them to an invasion of the alien colony -- IF I can get enough supporting military hardware in place for that. I'll need to get a scout report first!

If the turn gets run today (and assuming my turn was accepted a few hours late), I'll have another update posted tonight with the results...

[Pool Boy]

I forgot to mention I started a FRM-1 line several turns ago. Already retooled that line to something else, but I have plenty to send out to my first colony when I am ready. I really think that that is my next big project - colonizing the HAB 10 world in my starting system.

[ixnay]

Good news and bad news this turn!

The good news:
- My upgrades to the orbiter went almost flawlessly. Only one of my factory groups is short of labor, and only by 2%.
- My scouts completed their surveys of every planet in the home system.
- Most other orders seem to have run without problems.

The bad news:
- I think I miscalculated the research needed to exploit those Automation-10 units captured on the alien outpost -- by maybe 20k research! Argh! It will be another turn before I can start that Aut-10 production line!!
- I forgot to add food with all the new people in the orbiter, so there is a starvation/rebel problem now. (At least this is easy to fix.)
- I am out of consumer goods at the alien outpost, and I may not have fueled/fooded my scouts as much as I really needed.

There aren't too many random elements in this game. My biggest problem is forgetting about one detail or another in each of these little ventures I embark on. I would probably do better by (ahem) not waiting until the last minute to do my turn. I am happy to report that the significant number of bugs/errors/etc from the old days of Empyrean Challenge are pretty much gone! The errors I am dealing with are all self-inflicted. I imagine this can largely be attributed to the order-entry client tool, but perhaps also to Vern's comprehensive rewrite of the code.

I started a batch of 500k military robots (level 1) to effectively replace 1m soldiers (or add to them). My Farm-1s will finish out the 1m I'll need for planet 2. And a batch of Farm-3 (hydroponics) is in production now, to disperse among my empire as needed. I will never go hungry again. Add to that a batch of robot probes and enough Mines to complete my home-world upgrade. Incidentally, the long-awaited survey reports brought delightful news -- each planet has a different array of mineral deposits. They don't all have 6 deposits, they aren't all predictable arrays of limited-vs-unlimited deposits, and the yields vary wildly, so mining has become a bit of a discovery process that will make stellar geography fun!

I boosted my Life Support tech to level 4, and added a bunch of factories to build them. When this batch is complete, I should have more than enough to shuttle tens of millions of colonists AND invade the alien base in the next system. I might just leave the production line going through another cycle and have enough Life Support to last through the rest of the game. I expect the same will be true once I get my Automation-10s going. One big production run of them will have me automated out into the forseeable future.

I am doubling down on my gambit of inward development, here, by focusing on economic techs and staying in-system. But I am at last making a nod toward expansion by having the tools ready for settling planet 2, and by scouting the next system. I am feeling some heat on this, because I checked a report this turn that tells you have many Habitable-world-points the "winning" players have settled, and the top 3 are all at 35. This means at least 3 other players have successfully colonized their in-system hab worlds, and I am behind.

[ixnay]

Okay, just submitted my turn.

First, I have something like 8m Lab-5 that just came off the production lines. So I am shutting down all the old Lab-1 and starting up all the Lab-5. I am reworking some other production priorities, so I should have enough PRO labor to run all these labs. (I have the capacity to build Lab-6, but want to jump to Lab-7 before starting another production run.)

Second, I finished 2m advanced hydrophonic farms, and am asssembling half of them up on the orbiting colony. They should make food without burning fuel. 1m should make 15m food/turn, which will go to feeding ships and orbiters from here on out. The rest of these farms will be ready to ship out to other colonies as I build them.

Third, I put in a sizable initial investment in Power Plants. We start with 1m Power Plant-1s but our home planets can support 2.5m of them. So by jumping tech up to Power-Plant-4 this turn (and cranking up a production run), I will be able to run 2.5m that produce 4 fuel-equivalents per turn. That's 10m free fuel that I can devote to energy weapons/shields in the future (or, uh, "moving ships around.")

I guess my mind has been shifting to military preparedness, because I also laid down a tech-improvement marker on missiles and missile launchers. I am still probably going to colonize my in-system world first, but I am thinking now that conquering that alien colony in the next system will be my best leap-frog option. It could add tens of millions of new citizens to my holdings -- much faster than the normal birth rate. So I want to start building a basic space superiority fleet to at least control their out-system orbit.

I also noticed this turn that one of the systems I can see has been "named" by another player. So I have neighbors, even as I conduct my turtle strategy for the early game. This might also be what prompted me to start beefing up some military.

Next turn I will have enough tech to leverage those AUT-10 prototypes finally, and start a final production run of Automation that should last me through the game. I will also combine some scouts and build out 2 new ships -- one "in system freighter" and one "space superiority" destroyer-class thing. Oh, and the bulk of my new Mine-4 units will be finished, so I will have a big upgrade of mineral production...

[Pool Boy]

I am apparently way, way, way behind you. WTH.

[ixnay]

The tutorials advised going with FCT-5 to start with, which is what you and probably most people did. At least one other person when with LAB-5 instead. I went with LAB-4 and FCT-4 at the start, which gave me most of the technology boost and most of the production boost, which meant I could push out a big pile of LAB-4 with my newly assembled FCT-4 as soon as turn 5 rolled around.

That one decision has put me in a good place, compensating for the horrifying food crisis, mismanagement of scouts, ignoring the orbiter for a long time, etc. You are probably way ahead of me in terms of production capacity, orbiting colony, etc. I now have LAB-6, FCT-4, LFS-3, FRM-3, MIN-4, and now Power Plant 4 and some missile tech. Oh, and the prototypes from the alien outpost. But you'll catch up with your high volume of productive output. Especially if you follow up with a big military push and conquer your nearby alien colony sooner than I do...

[Pool Boy]

Well that is an impressive list of tech. The 3+ TL I have are FCT-5, LAB-5, LFS-3, MIN-3 LTSU-3 and TPT-5. Everything else is TL-2 or less. I expended for MINs and Power Plants this turn. I still have not expanded to AUT-10 or even SEN-5 yet with the alien artifacts. That said, it looks like I am not as bad as I thought.

The one thing I am realizing is how uneven my manufacturing is becoming. I have to correct that. One thing I am investing in heavily on production is BEAMERS. I need to read up on how they work, but I imagine it will save me a lot of ferrying things around.

---

By the way.....I want my next turn to pore over!

[ixnay]

My understanding is that beamers are big expensive pieces of hardware that burn a lot of fuel, which is supposed to make it a wash vs. using ships to lug stuff around. But the flexibility and speed has got to be a factor, since it takes 2 turns to get from one planet to another (including docking). (Unless I have that wrong?)

So you have higher tech factories and Light Structure. Good for you. I am thinking I am balanced enough at the moment that I can afford a couple turns focus on military tech. I might double down on missiles to start with -- they carry an advantage over energy weapons at long distances, which makes them good for bombardment. I had forgotten about the high tech sensors at the alien outpost -- thanks for reminding me! Sensors are actually super important for ship combat!