My White Feather

Well, so far it’s three down, four to go.  Technically, the Klackons are not completely gone, but they don’t really count.  All that stand between me and galaxy-wide domination are the Alkari, the Mrrshan, and the Darloks.

AND, of course, the hated Psilons.

You might wonder why I’m not more concerned about either the Alkari or (especially) the Mrrshan Empire?

Well, the Alkari are generally speaking not that aggressive a race.  Further, although they are “close” to me in the northwest of the galaxy, there is a bit of a gap,  and both a black hole and a Space Eel in the way.  So they aren’t really pressing me.  As for the Mrrshan, they don’t grow fast, and there are a bunch of relatively poor colony candidate worlds between us.  So I expect they will just keep to themselves mostly, so long as I don’t provoke them.

But the Psilons already have a considerable tech lead on me.  This means I won’t be able to match them one-to-one on a ship-for-ship basis, since their BBs will be much better than my BBs.  Similarly, their star bases and battlestations will be harder to reduce.  The longer I let that situation continue, the worse it gets.  And now that they have Meklon system conquered, they can use that excellent former Meklari homeworld to produce some significant resources.

So I’m not going to wait any longer.  It’s time to take the Psilons out.  Then, I will assess what needs to be done to finish off the remaining victims. *

So here is the plan of action:

We will start rushing BBs until we have produced 8 or 9 of them (there will be losses along the way, no doubt).  We will take down the Space Crystal at Carina and the Space Dragon at Manica, hoping to get some decent technologies there from the ancient artifacts we can sense are to be found in those systems (no doubt drawing the space monsters there).  After establishing an outpost at Manica, we will attack the Psilons at Satyr, then Mentar, then Thrak.  That will leave them with their much less valuable colonies at Jacob and Gladius to the north, as well as at Kolath and Berel to the east.  Eventually, I’ll take Meklon, which should do for the Psilons.

3524.5
We attack the Space Crystal at Carina, and all three BBs survive.  As a result, we are able to retrieve ancient artifacts from the Precursors that let us understand the technologies of Planetary Stock Exchange and, importantly, Battlestations!    Finally, I’ll be able to protect my colonies with the second-stage of star base evolution.

We make the necessary purchases to rush completion of the battleship being built at Home Prime.

3525.4
With a fourth BB in the fleet, we decide it’s time to take on the Space Dragon.  These critters are notoriously harder to handle, as they are more mobile than Crystals and the like.  And, as it turns out, we suffer the loss of our first BB.  BB1 goes down in flames.  But thanks to the survival pods, Commander Gizmo survives and transfers his command to BB3.  This time, the only technology available is that of Holo Simulators.  These handy things improve morale, causing production of resources to increase.  An outpost is established in the system.

3525.6
The time has come.  War with the Psilons has begun!  We attack them in the Satyr system with no warning (surely their great mental powers should have warned them?).  Satyr II is taken, and with it comes the Robo-miner technology.   Robo-miners are good, because they increase the productivity of every laborer, plus they add 10 PP in output.  Nice tech to have.

3525.8
The Psilons make the same mistake in their home system the Klackons did: they leave a planet undefended and allow me to wipe out their defending battleship without having to take on the very impressive fortifications in orbit around their homeworld.  No tech is taken, though, sadly.

This month also sees a first for our empire!  We have produced a colony ship, and sent it to Carina, where it landed on Carina II and started a new colony.  This is how you establish your presence outside your home system normally.  In most games, this is what I spend all my time doing from day 1 (or at least as soon as I can build them).  For me to go 250 turns plus without settling a colony is a personal record!

The Alkari ambassador sticks his head in my door to say hi.  Shockingly, he’s quite pleasant about it.  Maybe that has something to do with our relative strengths…

3525.9
Another first: the Galactic High Council meets for the first time.  This means that some race has finally managed to come into contact with all remaining races.  Since the Alkari just said hi to me, it’s pretty clear they are the triggering race (I’m still lacking contact with either the Mrrshan or the Darloks).

In the periodic meetings of the High Council, each race votes on which of the two most populous races should be lord high ruler of all in the Galaxy.  The number of votes is based on your population, though the exact formula has never been clear to me.  It’s not one-to-one with your population units.  If one of the two top leaders gets 2/3 of the available votes, that ruler is made Galactic Leader Supreme, and the game is over.

For this first meeting, there are 31 votes possible.  I have 13 of them, and the Psilons have 7, with the rest distributed to the Mrrshan, the Darkloks, the Alkari, and the Klackons (with one measly vote still clutched in their claws).  Surprisingly, the Darloks vote for me (they are at war with the Psilons, so the enemy of my enemy is my friend, apparently), so I end up with a total of 16 out of 31.  The Psilons get the vote of the Alkari (obviously, those two empires like each other), so they end up with 10.  Neither of us have the required number to win (21), so the game goes on.

3526.0
I take Thrax IV from the Psilons.  Planetary Supercomputer tech is now mine.  In the same turn, I complete a fifth BB, and start it forward to the front.  It’s gonna take seven or eight of them to take down the Psilon battlestation at Mentar III.  Shortly after this, the Psilons offer peace with a tribute treaty.  Not taking that offer.

3526.7
The last two races say hi to me:  Darloks and Mrrshan.  They are not pleasant about it.

3527.0
Aaaaand it’s finally happened.

In Master of Orion, you started much as you do in this game.  The object was essentially the same, domination through military or diplomatic means.  In the center of the map was the Orion system, which contains the legendary world of Orion, Throne of the Ancients.  This world has a cache of high-level technology on it, but to get to it, you have to beat the “Guardian”, a massive ship that takes a really strong force to beat.  If you can do that, you don’t automatically win the game; you still have to accomplish either the military or diplomatic victory, though obviously that’s easier with the significant tech bonus you get from being the “Master of Orion”.

Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares ups the ante (as any good sequel game does!).  In this game, there is still an Orion system, and it’s guarded by the Guardian.  And you still can win militarily or diplomatically.  But there’s an added twist.

The Orion race long ago battled an almost equally strong race called the Antarans.  These evil creatures were bent on conquest.  But the Orions managed to defeat them.  To keep them from causing any further trouble, but without committing genocide against them, the Orions created a “pocket universe” and locked the Antarans into it for eternity.  Then, the Orions themselves left the known universe, leaving behind their homeworld guarded by the Guardian.

At some point in the game, the Antarans manage to escape their pocket universe.  They start sending fleets of ships through into our universe, destroying whatever they come into contact with.  Fortunately, they are rather single-minded: upon arrival, they pick out one planet, and attack it to the best of their ability.  If they can, they wipe it out.  Then  they head back to their pocket universe, ready to try again later.

Their ships are incredibly strong.  A simple frigate (the smallest design) is loaded with enough firepower to take out multiple generic battleships; two of them can overwhelm a star base; and by the time they start sending in destroyers with the frigates, there’s not much you can use to beat them off from the generic designs short of star fortresses, bolstered by every possible planetary defense and a good size fleet of ships.

In other words, they are a resource “sink”. **

So this turn, the Antarans attack for the first time.  A single frigate is headed to Samson.  I’m going to have to hope that my star base there can hold off that frigate, as I’m currently stretched a bit for funds (anticipating the cost of my upcoming BBs), and don’t want to buy a battlestation for the planet.

Get used to this.  It’s going to happen a lot.

3527.1
The Antarans are beaten off, but the star base is toast.  I’ll simply build a battlestation to replace it.  Fortunately, no lives were lost.  This time.

The next month, the Alkari end up at war with the Klackons, who had finally settled a second world (Lycaon, defeating a Space Eel).  I don’t expect this to go well for the Klackons.

3828.0
The Psilons try for peace again.  This time, the offer the Kolath system.  I’m going to take that anyway soon, so that doesn’t really tempt me.  I produce BB8 (BB7 is still in spacedock).

Shortly after this, the Alkari and the Mrrshan end up at war.  That’s good; it’s about time the Mrrshan had to do some fighting.

3528.9
After four months of continuous bombardment by a single battleship, I wipe out the Psilon colony on Kolath II.  This is timely, because a Psilon BB and a Psilon destroyer are incoming next month, and, as I’ve said, I can’t stand up to them one-on-one given their tech advantage.  So we depart back to Manica.

3529.0
We finally take Mentar III!  With the arrival of a seventh BB, we attack.  A BB is lost, but we can now land our troops and conquer the planet.  Neutron Blaster tech is taken from the conquered scientists.

On the same turn, we establish colonies at Ching II and Manica I, converting the existing outposts.  Further efforts will be directed to subdue the Meklon system.

3529.1
Those rotten finks!  They surrendered!!

Not to ME of course; no, they don’t like me.  Instead, they surrendered what was left of their empire to the Alkari!  So, now, if I want the former Meklar homeworld at Meklon, I have to start a war with the Alkari, who just managed to gain a battleship along with the various systems.

So Phase 3 comes to a crashing halt.  I’ll have to assess the situation, and see what can be done going forward.

___________
* Some readers will note that I almost never talk about the Darloks.  This is because they are not particularly a threat to me.  Their main advantage is that they move their ships through hyperspace in an undetectable fashion, so they just suddenly show up at your doorstep and start attacking.  But I’m omniscient, so I ignore their silly cloaking devices.  Further, they love to rely upon spying to get their technology, but that never manages to keep up with someone who is truly focusing on technology.  I’m “creative”, so I can stay ahead of them comfortably, even given that they are next door to the Psilons.  Finally, they are way off up in the Northeast corner of the galaxy; so far, they haven’t even gotten close enough to me to say hello, not even from the other side!

**  From a “meta” standpoint, all games of this genre involve the “production” of various “resources”.  You could think of this as the generation of counters of various different colors if you wanted to make it more generic.  So a farmer produces a green chip, a laborer produces a red chip, and a scientist produces a blue chip.  You collect chips, and then use those to buy the right to produce more chips faster, or to protect your chip-making from the attacks of the enemies.

One way that game designers complicate this process for the player is by designing “sinks” into the game.  What we mean here by a sink is something into which the resources disappear (like water down a drain).  In the real world, engineers use “heat sinks” to trap and channel away heat generated by devices (like computer processor chips).  In the same way, a game designer uses a resource sink to trap and remove from the game resources that have been introduced into it.

You’re very familiar with this concept.  Indeed, not only have you played a game with a famous money sink, you probably used a “local rule” to remove the effect of the sink on the game.  In Monopoly, when you land on certain squares, you are “taxed”.  You are supposed to pay these taxes back to the Bank.  Certain Chance and Community Chest cards can do this, too.  This speeds up the game, by reducing the aggregate wealth someone must “monopolize” to win the game.

Sadly, many people dislike this, because it makes them lose faster.  So there is a famous “local rule” many play with.  This rule has you put fines and taxes into the center of the board.  If someone lands on “Free Parking”, you get to collect the money lying there.  Thus, the “sink” fails to remove money from the game.  That means that the winner has to work that much harder to collect everyone’s money, and the game lasts longer.

The next time you play Monopoly!, think about that.  Isn’t that game taking long enough as it is??????