Cluster Wars (formerly Empyrean Challenge)

[Pool Boy]

They are? Ship combat?! GAH! I like the idea of missiles.

I actually think I am going to crank a bunch of research this turn - maybe 10M. That will be fun to figure out what to do with it all.

I am frankly scared shitless that I am not making enough LTSU. Next turn more FCT-1s go offline and I will be dramatically expanding the OBC. From our conversation, we are probably even on the OBC front, more or less, now that you upgraded. I'll need LTSU for everything - ships, OPC, OBC, ESC on all of these planets. GAH!

[ixnay]

Okay, I finally had a chance to look at the new turn results. And this is going to be a big turn for me -- need to order up some big builds, design a colony and military fleet, plot out my resource needs, etc.

Basically, I think I am emerging from the opening game and moving into a phase of initial expansion. But how bout those results?

As per my norm, I goofed up my orbiter again. I set up a large number of hydroponic farms, but failed to add people and automation to work them. Since farming comes before manufacturing in turn-processing, that means my existing crew ran the farms and had precious little left to run the factories. So there were shut-downs, but nothing critical.

I brought most of my ships together at the home world to consolidate into some better designs -- fewer, bigger multi-purpose scouts with updated equipment and large holds for food, fuel, and con-goods. 3 of the scouts appeared at my neighboring alien system, and now share the outside orbit with an alien scout. Might be some gunplay? The alien homeworld is still there, still "mass 8", still sitting on 10 habitation points.

I accidentally let one of my factory groups start up a new production run of Lab-5, so I basically threw away some minerals there. Dang. I have a large pile of new Factory-4, Life Support-3, Farm-3, and (drum roll) Mine-4. So my basic economy is churning now and it's time to expand.

First order of business is tech advances. I saved some from last turn and have a lot of high-tech labs in play now, so I have 15m research to play with. 11m of that is going to exploit my alien prototypes (captured in the in-system alien outpost). That means Sensor-5 and Automation-10. The Sensor-5 is absolutely critical considering I am planning an invasion. The Automation is probably an extravagance -- a large investment in what will probably be overkill. But I just can't seem to walk away from such a huge prototyping opportunity.

(Prototyping means I can save up to 80% off tech advances if I have higher-tech prototypes to work from -- as long as I make the advance in one jump. And jumping from 3 to 10 is BIG. But 80% off of BIG is even BIGGER, in my mind.)

I will probably put the remaining 4m research into Missiles and Missile Launchers, raising them both to 3. This means a big production setup this turn and a lot of construction 4 turns from now.

And finally, there is one more tiny little item to report. Following Pool Boy's lead, I clicked around some of the buttons I had been ignoring on the game tool, and found that apparently some other player's ship transmitted a message to one of mine last turn! (Very cryptic -- one word -- "Salve!") So I have the ID number of a ship belonging to "Augustus", and am seeing star names start appearing on my probe reports.

As Pool Boy would say, GAH!

[Darth Pedro]

Okay, I finally had a chance to look at the new turn results. And this is going to be a big turn for me -- need to order up some big builds, design a colony and military fleet, plot out my resource needs, etc.

Basically, I think I am emerging from the opening game and moving into a phase of initial expansion. But how bout those results?

As per my norm, I goofed up my orbiter again. I set up a large number of hydroponic farms, but failed to add people and automation to work them. Since farming comes before manufacturing in turn-processing, that means my existing crew ran the farms and had precious little left to run the factories. So there were shut-downs, but nothing critical.

I brought most of my ships together at the home world to consolidate into some better designs -- fewer, bigger multi-purpose scouts with updated equipment and large holds for food, fuel, and con-goods. 3 of the scouts appeared at my neighboring alien system, and now share the outside orbit with an alien scout. Might be some gunplay? The alien homeworld is still there, still "mass 8", still sitting on 10 habitation points.

I accidentally let one of my factory groups start up a new production run of Lab-5, so I basically threw away some minerals there. Dang. I have a large pile of new Factory-4, Life Support-3, Farm-3, and (drum roll) Mine-4. So my basic economy is churning now and it's time to expand.

First order of business is tech advances. I saved some from last turn and have a lot of high-tech labs in play now, so I have 15m research to play with. 11m of that is going to exploit my alien prototypes (captured in the in-system alien outpost). That means Sensor-5 and Automation-10. The Sensor-5 is absolutely critical considering I am planning an invasion. The Automation is probably an extravagance -- a large investment in what will probably be overkill. But I just can't seem to walk away from such a huge prototyping opportunity.

(Prototyping means I can save up to 80% off tech advances if I have higher-tech prototypes to work from -- as long as I make the advance in one jump. And jumping from 3 to 10 is BIG. But 80% off of BIG is even BIGGER, in my mind.)

I will probably put the remaining 4m research into Missiles and Missile Launchers, raising them both to 3. This means a big production setup this turn and a lot of construction 4 turns from now.

And finally, there is one more tiny little item to report. Following Pool Boy's lead, I clicked around some of the buttons I had been ignoring on the game tool, and found that apparently some other player's ship transmitted a message to one of mine last turn! (Very cryptic -- one word -- "Salve!") So I have the ID number of a ship belonging to "Augustus", and am seeing star names start appearing on my probe reports.

As Pool Boy would say, GAH!

Don't put your food. fuel and consumer goods for the crew and ship into a Cargo Hold. You can only LOAD and/or UNLOAD a Cargo Hold from a Colony.
"The Colony is directed to Load the Items-TL listed from its own Storage Inventory to the Cargo Hold of receiving Ship. The Cargo to be Loaded must be Unassembled or Non-Assembly Items or Population Units. The Ship must be Docked to the Colony. The Load Cargo Order requires one-fifth the Transport Capacity of an equivalent Transfer Order. A Load Cargo Order to a Ship belonging to another Player will Fail."

[ixnay]

Just putting a marker down that the next CW turn is due TOMORROW. Since I have an ambitious agenda this turn, I am going to see if I can knock it out tonight. I will try to write up a decent presentation of the ship/colony design process.

[Pool Boy]

I am saving up for a proper colony/freighter ship for next turn. Don't get me wrong, I need and want them this turn, but I am short of CNW to pull it off. I have too much to do and I am frankly more terrified of running out of raw materials.

[jwsosus]

I'm really missing the Ixnay turn commentary....

[ixnay]

Whoa, thanks! I am woefully behind. My immediate priority is to get my Legends turn out. Running a week behind on that -- pity my poor teammates.

A quick update is in order, though. I didn't have time to do a full set of orders for this turn, so I got in the BARE minimum. I updated 5m of my 6m mines to Mine-4, which means I am digging stuff out 4x as fast with the same work force. I'll have the last 1m upgraded in a turn or two. I got Automation-10 from the alien prototypes (which was a big expense), and now have a big batch of Aut-10 in production -- probably enough to last throughout the game. (Each Aut-10 replaces 100 unskilled workers!) I also put some more research into military stuff and have a couple of big production lines going on that, in anticipation of a military invasion of the alien colony nextdoor.

I need to do a real turn this next go-around, but Legends must come first...

[ixnay]

Okay, I battled away the forces of real life long enough to get a halfway decent set of orders submitted. Not fully decent, but halfway decent. If any of you are following my Legends game log, that turn is coming tonight (guaranteed).

First, I had a lot of research to spend. My most urgent priority was to finally burn those high-tech sensor prototypes I captured in the alien outpost. 18 Sensor-5 means I get to deduct 72% off the cost of upgrading from level 2 to level 5! And sensors are critical for all space-based battle stuff. I have a big batch of military hardware in the production queue now, so I'm going to need a few good Sensor-5 to aim with.

I also bumped my Laboratory tech from 6 to 8 -- an enormous investment in research. I don't want to diddle with single-level upgrades to labs. I am currently working Lab-5s, and hadn't built any Lab-6 yet. This will kick it all up a notch, so I am starting up a production run of these Lab-8 now. We'll see how it goes.

Finally, I had 2m research left over so I upgraded Hyper Engines to level 3.

I uploaded a new batch of raw materials to the orbiter and pulled down a large hunk of newly built Light Structure. That will go to ship building next turn. I also noticed a small but growing group of unemployables up there -- all new population growth in a colony goes into the unemployable group first (families, etc). I want them down on the home colony where birth rates are better.

I loaded up most of my scout ships with food and consumer goods. Their crews don't actually consume those con-goods, but they will bring them out to the alien outpost in orbit 1. Out there I might swap personnel so that the alien population gets moved to my homeworld and the outpost gets a new staff of loyalists with no rebel issues.

There are 3 other scouts sitting in the adjacent star system -- the one with the large alien colony. They are in orbit 11 (the outer ring), along with a single alien scout. I ordered them to attack the scout with energy weapons and then move in to the orbit with the colony. They can attack that next turn. They will likely get fried, but I hope to get a good probe of the alien colony defenses in the process. Kamikaze. Typing this, it occurs to me that the alien scout in orbit 11 might not be one of THESE aliens -- it might belong to another player. Oops. I guess I will find out -- are ALL ships/colonies that don't belong to me flagged as "alien"?

The rest of my turn was minor production tweaks. I have a lot of stuff in the pipeline. I also happen to be out of Factory-4 so next turn I will probably want to bump up Factory and Mine technologies and set up a new production run of both. We'll see how much research I have to play with.

The big thing I left OUT this turn was using the ship designer tools to build a large freighter. This will involve me finally learning the rules about cargo bays and the neato design sheets. I was late and ran out of time to fully document all that stuff. It will be done for next turn.

[Pool Boy]

I cannot believe how much more technologically advanced you are than I am. UGH.

That said, this turn was done in a mad, uncareful dash to get it in under the wire. We'll see how many mistakes I make.

Also, I want my next turn already.....NOW.

[Darth Pedro]

Hint:

Use your standing orders to do such things as...

OPC, Pickup, ALL, UEM, OBC
OPC, Draft, ALL, USK, PRO

etc.

Of course you don't want to do the 2nd order UNTIL you have over abundance of AUT and are utilizing NO USK.

You should also have several million CNW in the OPC and maybe 2,000,000 CNW in the OBC, increasing those levels as capacity is required with growth.