Let´s Play: Master of Orion 3 -Will the Madness never stop?

[The Grey Prophet]

So, my first post, my first Let´s Play -and I picked Master of Orion 3. Well, it does sound promising, I guess. It only depends on what you expect. (I should warn right away that it will take me sometime to properly set everything up -the first posts will contain massive heaps of information, but I promise that I try my best to keep your interest.)



Warning! Warning! Large Text approaching!



The Four-Fold-Quantum War


Yesterday morning, I woke up with this weird idea in my head: “Hm, I would like to make a Let´s Play of Master of Orion III.” And because I always do what the voices in my head tell me, I started right away.
A warning before you read on: This Let´s Play will have pictures of course, I´m no sadist after all, but let´s face it: Screenshots or videos from a round-based strategy game can only do so much before boredom settles in. If you don´t play it yourselves, only looking at someone playing the game will bore you to insanity pretty fast. So I´m forced to write something interesting. I can only promise to try to break up the advancing text-walls somewhat with the odd picture here and there. But if you don´t like to read, you should run now, before they crush you.

Advanced warning: English is not my mother language, so weird spelling and grammar errors and strange word choices are to be expected. Please don´t get discouraged from my slow descent to mad rambling and read on.
If someone is still here, we will now start for real. Hopefully.


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=70&pictureid=192
Most pictures will look like this. Bored yet?



Chapter I: Introductions

Well, maybe not all of you are familiar with the Master of Orion franchise of round-based Space-Strategy games. I will of course elaborate a bit, for the sake of those not “in-the-know”, as it is called these days. (Or those days long past, I tend to confuse the two often.)

The first two games were fun and conventional games for this genre: You colonised, you explored, you build your fleet, researched better weapons and then blew all your enemies to kingdom come. And you micromanaged all of your empire, as everyone who likes these kind of games wants to. Everyone. No exceptions. So of course all fans of Master of Orion were pretty miffed as the third title of the series changed everything: Now you could make strange “development plans” and control most of your empire with a few slide bars here and there. Some even joked that you could run your empire entirely on auto -but the joke was on them, because the AI would run your empire into the ground real fast without your help.

The idea was, that in MO3 you would REALLY be the emperor of your vast Imperium: And every decent emperor doesn´t HAVE to manage everything by himself. You have incompetent underlings for that. And boy, in Master of Orion 3 your underlings really mastered the “incompetent” part... Without tight control, you could end up with a fleet entirely composed of transport ships, or your colonies would build only Psy-Op ground units. (Something like propaganda units that somehow weakened an enemy army. Most would however prefer a real army instead of masses of propaganda specialists lurking in their reserves.) Fact is, most of the time your own AI seemed more intent on helping your enemies than actually helping you. Funny thing though, even on higher difficulty levels the enemy AI was stupid enough that I couldn´t care less.

Your vice chancellors (AI) will also prevent you from falling into insanity once you managed to colonise 100+ planets. Believe me, the first time I played MO3 I actually tried to manage every single planet without AI, but after I hit the three-digits it took me literally hours to rotate through all my worlds every round. And I had to do that because my underlings were morons. As if all my henchmen were only stupidly programmed AI and not real people. Funny that. After quite a few of these neverending rounds I simply went mad.

After my little mental breakdown was over I finally discovered a few tricks to aid the stupid AI in maintaining my worlds and I ended up with a pretty decent game. And THEN I found out about the last patch that came out before the makers of Master of Orion 3 went bankrupt or disappeared or something AND I found the Ultima Orion Mod: The army of bugs haunting the game was destroyed and I finally had a GOOD game. I rejoiced.

Concerning the bugs: The games was still playable, even without the patch, but it had this rushed, uncompleted feeling to it: Many things were simply out of whack. For example, weak shield regeneration and vastly overpowered missile technologies combined to hideously broken battles: If you had armed your self-build ships with missiles, and your enemy not, you won. Simple as that. I even found out that I could arm Longrange-Attackships with a few missiles and many, many light weapon batteries to exploit the enemy-AI: The AI never build its Longrange-Attackships with missiles nor did the enemy task forces mixed their forces. A Carrier Task Force had only Carriers and their escorts, their Attack Task Forces never had Indirect Fire Ships (Main armament: Missiles) or Carriers -and so on. My mixed Longrange-Task Forces devastated enemies with their opening salvo of overpowered missiles, then a few Carriers among my 18-ship armadas launched their fighters and harassed the enemy task forces. (With the Ultima Orion Mod, you can have 32-ship armadas, but only because someone among the team thought larger fleets are better fleets. And I wholeheartedly agree.)

And because the enemy AI seldom armed their ships with enough light weapons to destroy even a small fighter force effectively and their escorts alone could only to so much my forces with their many, many light weapons then proceed to literally rape the survivors. (Heavy weaponry takes longer to reload/cool down/whatever and a fighter that is hit is pretty much dead, regardless of fancy fighter shields or -armour. So a ship with a few heavy weapons will be pretty much bogged down with defending against a fighter strike for a long time, but a ship with many light weapons has a good chance of fighting them off in short order.)

And remember, without patch and Mod shield regeneration was almost useless, so many battles were decided by the force who could hit first. Fighters were broken, too: Even with patch and mod their spawn for infinity from their carrier ships. That was good for your ships, but very bad if the enemy had a few carrier groups of his own. At last with patch and Ultima Mod the point defence of your ships was upgradable along with your fighters.

In those battles, my forces still had the edge because of the mass of light weapons I brought into them, but throughout the game the fighters got continually stronger, the Point Defence Systems not, so in the end phases carriers and massive mobile missile launchers dominated every fleet, decimating their enemies with Macross Missile Massacres left and right.(Both parties, fighters and PDS got new weapons throughout the game thanks to research, but the fighters got additional things like shields, armour -and bigger fighters. The PDS was all you got. It was weaker then light weapon mounts but a little bit faster. Really helpful (sarcasm). Missiles just got STRONGER, period.)

Well, your fleet anyway. The AI was to dumb to exploit the imbalances/bugs. As long as you planned ahead you could steam roll every enemy fleet with laughable ease. One time, I fought down through successive battles an enemy fleet more than SIX TIMES larger than mine. They had the same technologies I had and their only weakness where a few useless transport task forces mixed up with their main forces. (Every battle is constrained to a maximum of ten task forces per side and if a side has more, they have to wait until the first task forces either flee or get destroyed in battle.)
In this epic battle fought maybe 100+ of my ships against 600-700 of the enemy. Meklar against New Antarans. The New Antarans lost EVERY SINGLE SHIP. The Meklar? Maybe a dozen. Oh, and this battle took place on difficulty level normal, by the way. The question is, what was normal in a battle lopsided as this? Answer: Nothing. The bugs in the game actively conspired against the AI to create a monumentally and boring cluster fuck of a battle system.

There were many real bugs to, not simply imbalances. But I don´t want to rant on and on like some imbecile, if you want to know more, here are some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_III#Diplomacy

http://apolyton.net/moo3/ (http://apolyton.net/moo3/)

In conclusion, MO3 had more bugs than stars to conquer, but patches and fan-made mods changed that.

Years later, I´am still playing occasionally -and I think it is still (or maybe finally) a fun (but complex) game.

So, let´s get started -finally: For this Let´s Play of Master of Orion III I planned something special: As MO3 is a game whose focus is on the „Big Picture(tm)“ and not on the micromanagement, like it is in many other strategy games, I will not only play a single game, I will play four of them simultaneously! (Well not really in the literal sense, because I would need four computers to do that, but you know what I mean.)

Seriously, I think only with four different species attempting to conquer the Orion Sector on the largest map available someone can truly understand the grand scope of the game. A thing on the side: I will be playing with the Ultima Orion Mod and the gigantic Ultima-Orion Map (Hundreds of stars await!) and in a attempt to not let the games go on for infinity, I will constrict the games to eight computer players (in one case, only seven because I felt like it). And only one winning condition will be allowed: Yes, it will be WAR until only one player remains. Who will effectively replace the Orion Senate. (And wipe out the Harvesters. I really, really HATE them.)

Other conditions will be: Only short and few star lanes available. That means, shorter travel time between star systems, fewer tactical possibilities. (At least to begin with. Another condition was applied through the means of the Ultima Mod: A 20% possibility for the forming of a new star lane every round.)

Four different species are chosen for every part of this huge war/insanity-of-mine: First Meklar, then Humans, Silicoids and at last the Imsaeis. The Meklar are a bunch of robots after their ancestors “cleansed” themselves of their own filthy flesh (weirdos), the Humans are... well you know. They are humans. Okay, you want more? In this game, they are good diplomats and have good spies. Their Military is average, as is the rest. Of course, a player can chose to change all that before the start of a new game. And I will...

http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=70&pictureid=196
The Meklar...


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=70&pictureid=198
...and the Humans.


Silicoids are a crystalline species, something like semi-mobile crystal formations with their own unique and alien intelligence. (Normaly, rock-stupid would be a suitable adjective for them, because of their lack of research capabilities, but after my changes, that will be quite different...)


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=70&pictureid=197
For a bunch of overhyped rocks they look quite pretty, I think.


The last war will be fought with the hydrogen-breathing Imsaeis. Normally, they are quite peaceful and ideal for a quick diplomatic victory through domination of the Orion Senate. After I vandalized their genetic structure, they too will strife to conquer the entire Sector. (And hopefully not be the military push-overs they are when unchanged.)

http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=70&pictureid=195
This picture was brought to you by Visualisation Inc.



A few of those “changes” will be the same overall: All will be living under a Constitutional Monarchy (average, no great bonuses, but also no great penalties, if any). Yes, I know that means that even the robots will have a monarch. (Titles for all will be: Imperator (Meklar), Emperor (Humans), Monarch (Silicoids), Monarch of the Realm (Imsaeis).) No Kings. Kings would be boring. Everyone has kings. My monarchies can live without one.

All species will be pessimistic because of the premise (will be explained shortly) and highly individual (because I don´t like anything that reeks of collectivism and as a balance to the monarchistic mindset of the populace). Pessimistic simply means that for the general population of your empire, every day will be Black Friday. Enemy spies will have a hard time infiltrating your empire, because quite frankly, your population will see spies everywhere. On the other hand, a paranoid and pessimistic public is hard on the government, so avoiding annoying the people under your rule is a little bit harder than usual. (If you don´t give a damn, worlds can and will rebel against you -you will have to conquer them back in that case. And even if they don´t rebel, they can reduce or stop your Production entirely while rioting in the streets.) Mostly, it is considered a disadvantage and will give you points for your changing experiments if selected.

Selecting the Individual option transforms your population into a bunch of free-thinking spirits. Who will also be egoists. That means your government will have a hard time containing all these carefree fairies hopping through your mighty realm. On the other hand, your people will be more creative -your research power per population will go up. Strangely, the game considers annoying the government as a greater disadvantage then the advantage of more research, so you will get points instead of losing them if you select it. To cut my rambling short, all other changes will be explained when the time is right. (When the new races begin their respective conquests.)

And all will be Utopists, just because they need at least a ray of hope in their future -pessimistic as the conquerors of the Orion Sector will be, at least they think the future will be a better place. Utopian views boosts research and creativity a bit, but also makes the your people lazier. (After all, the future will be better, why not wait until then before doing something worthwhile?)

Okay, here the premise/story I will use to weave everything together:

Long after the Orion Sector has been gone, long after the sun Orion has died, the mysterious
Narmaena are planning to invade the Milky Way-Galaxy. But the fabled CORE, a old Force
defending the Milky Way with the power of SCIENCE, counters the Invasion after the Galactic
Federation, successor of the old Orion Senate, is crumbling before the onslaught.

But soon the inevitable outcome seems clear: The Narmaena and their hideous and dramatic power
is to much for our galaxy. Doom awaits! In a last ditch effort the CORE completes the Universal
Parallel-Timejumpdevice (UPT) and sends a tome of knowledge into the past and the past of a few
parallel universes to strengthen the Federation BEFORE THE WAR EVEN BEGINS!

Now -and at the same time- long ago in the past, a few lucky bastards living in the Orion Sector are
finding the ancient tomes of knowledge, deposited by the UPT of the CORE of a far away future,
foretelling the War of Total Annihilation that awaits the galaxy, long after the current problems with
the Antarans are solved.

And with this, they aid cells of Utopists in their respective species, to slowly change their culture to
something that can and will replace the weak Orion Senate with a strong Empire, that can hold out
against Antarans, Harvesters (they are calling themselves the Ithkul, by the way) -and in the future, against the Mizarians who in a potential future will replace the New Antarans as the leaders of the Senate, and (Of course!) the evil Narmaena, who simply want to destroy everything, because they are EVIL, duh!


-And next time, we look upon the chosen races, think about things I conveniently forgot today and start maybe the first WAR. Maybe.-

[Ravashak]

I am saddened that you're not playing Ithkul with the intent of devouring everything.

Also, is that mod available in English?

[Token]

Are the images not showing up for anyone else?

[Ravashak]

It's not showing for me either, thought it was busy uploading or something

[The Grey Prophet]

A short update... I hope I found the error and the pictures are now visible. (Strangely, they were visible before, but only for me... then I read your comments from a different computer elsewhere and was at first confused -then I noticed that I couldn´t see them either. Well, I´m now officially dumb. Or the curse of MO3 makes my posts as flawed as the game was.)

Now I have a bit of free time and will begin working on the next part. The waiting shouldn´t be long.


@Ravashak, playing as the Ithkul could be fun of course, but isn´t it more fun to transform other Orion races to something almost as dangerous as they are? And since they don´t need other populations as food, other races can more easily add other races to their empire -making them fight against there former nations.

Concerning the Mod:

Sadly, the Ultima Orion Mod is only meant to work with the german fan translation.

An english version was planned, but the project seems to have died before completion.

If you are interested, there are some other mods you could try out there:

http://www.moo3.at/mods/

And the patcher used in the Ultima Orion Mod can be found by itself here:

http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/

I hope that helps.

[The Grey Prophet]

It took longer than I thought, but the next post is finally ready!

Chapter II: Weird Beginnings

Of course there would not be much fun to be had should I simply play the chosen Empires as they
are meant to be played, so there will be changes galore!

First: The Meklar.

Only a few years after the purification process ended, many Meklar discovered that they wanted to
be individuals, not part of a robotic collective. A bit to late, someone may think. Normally, their defiance would have been ineffective and finally useless, but in this reality, one of the Tomes of Total Annihilation appeared on Meklon and was found by one of the most conservative Meklars, B15N-E2R51KE18 (Okay, that is much to long. Now I will shorten his name to BONEBREAKER).

Soon he deciphered the weird cube-like thing he found near one old and forgotten mineshaft and was horrified -the Tome told him how most of the Meklar would be destroyed in the war against the Mizarians, how the survivors would flee deep into the galactic core and forced to hide, only to
finally be wiped out by the Narmaenic Invasion force. Logically, there had to be a fatal flaw in Meklar-Society for their civilization to end like... a pathetic bunch of weirdos.

BONEBREAKER concluded that something had to change. Of course he knew that he also could be in error, so he sought advice by a like-minded old friend. But alas, his friend leaked the information to the collective -and BONEBREAKER was ridiculed to believe in something the collective decided to be nothing more than a alien collection of science fiction.

The Meklar BONEBREAKER however found the information in the tome too accurate, even concerning their own past -as if the weird aliens the collective believed to be the creators of the cube-device had infiltrated their civilization completely. Either way, the stubborn old Meklar knew
there was a flaw in their “perfect” society. Because the collective would soon take action against his deviation from the accepted norm he contacted the Meklar he thought to be considered the most deviated from the norm and sought their help. With the help of BONEBREAKER, in the years to come many of the deviant Meklar shielded themselves successfully from the collective and evaded pursuit, in the end fleeing even from Meklar and to a distant colony. The colony had been abandoned during the purification, but now Millions of Meklar, travelling upon makeshift colony ships secretly converted from old ore trailers arrived upon this world, to build a new and different civilisation.

In BONEBREAKERs mind, even total failure in his experiment would at least mean the Meklar of Meklon didn´t need to expend valuable resources in exterminating the deviants.

With the help of the old Meklar the new society grew. Soon they had converted their last ship to building material and decided to severe the last connection with their brethren. A few cycles later the rest of the Orion Sector was swiftly conquered by the Antarans, then they suddenly called themselves the New Orions, the Harvesters made their first appearance -and the old Meklar society was nearly destroyed by the shenanigans of the old Antarans. A very bitter BONEBREAKER concluded his worst fears to be correct. The proud Meklar had fallen along with the rest of the Sector, their superiority had changed nothing. The last colony, Mordanth as it was renamed by its inhabitants, remained hidden.

And so, the first tome had changed history. In the near future of the Orion Sector the first War of the Reclaimers would begin, with a simple bunch of hunted Meklar on a forgotten world.



The Meklar, as my favourite species in MO3, was my first pick for the project. The new Meklar of the Mordanth Imperium (named after their sun, Mordanth in-game) are still very, very bad in growing crops-for-eating, but most of the rest got turned up-side-down.

The agrarian industry, by the way, is needed even for the Meklar. Because the game counts them as cybernetic lifeforms who use minerals AND organics to maintain themselves. For the Cynoids, who are cyborgs, that makes sense. For the Meklar, not so much. (You should better not think about what the Meklar need the organic substances for...) And due to the fact that the Meklar don´t need much of all that hamburger meat and wheat they produce, the surface option is more than enough. (The other options are maritim, for aquatic species the norm -and underground for cave-dwellers. Or maybe people who prefer things growing in the dark, like some kind of mushrooms, who knows? By the way, actual mushroompeople can be found as one of many neutral species throughout the Sector. Weirdly, they are adequate Warriors, if handled right after their conquest. But I digress.)





In mining the Meklar are superior, since they really need all that delicious ore. Of course, you can even here choose between what exactly is mined: Organic substances (for example, the Imsaeis “mine” organics for their machines, since all their equipment is kind of alive), Minerals/Rock (the Silicoids use this as norm) and ores. (Humans and Meklar. Meklar because they are ROBOTS and humans because we seem to prefer our spaceships to be build out of metal, not rocks. Yes, we are a strange people.) You could theoretically make changes here, if you want to play MO3 for yourselves, but you would only lose many points you may need and make no real difference. So you should not.


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=72&pictureid=205

Production is another component of cybernetic superiority. Therefore, it is superior. The better your Production is, the faster you can build things, like warships for example. Meklar can build things really fast.


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=72&pictureid=206

Under the Ultima Mod you can now choose focal points for your production, e. g. chemical industry (better research and production, but more pollution, lots of dirty, dirty pollution) or artisanry (bonus to the money you can get from your Production). The Meklar of Mordanth didn´t chose any of them, because they cost points and those points are better spend elsewhere. Also the Meklar are to hardcore for things like producing more consumer goods or artisanry. After all, they are not a bunch of Santa Clauses or fucking elves, aren´t they??! (Sorry for the outburst.)

Pollution is the next choice. The higher it is, the more likely the children of your species will be choking to death. (May be a bit exaggerated.) If it is high enough, you will get a small bonus to your Production. If it is to greenpeace, your Production will be hampered. (But only with a small penalty.) The Meklar choose high. Not enough for the best bonus, but enough to NOT cover their worlds in everlasting smog.


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=72&pictureid=207

Research and Creativity: That will be important for all four wars, because you will need it, simple as that. The Meklar are good and creative researchers, so I didn´t need to spend many points to ramp those options up to maximum mad scientist carnage power. This time, at least. (Oh god, those rock-stupid Silicoids... at least they are somewhat naturally creative. And I think the Imsaeis don´t even know what research is.) Because I like to be sane I didn´t pick races like the insectoid Klackons for the Grand War -with them you can´t even steal technologies, because their spies are even more stupid than their scientists. Yes, in the world of MO3, stones are more intelligent than insects. Chow on that for a while.


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=72&pictureid=208

Trade and Economics: Trade influences mainly the money you get from your worlds or the worlds of your soon-to-be-enemies trading with you or each other. If you choose to low, you can even have problems getting those pesky trade agreements and treaties from other empires in the first place. Economics influences the efficiency of your economy. The better, the better you can manage your money. If your economy is set to “barter”, your empire won´t even have money. An honor-based economy like that is highly unstable. You won´t get much interest on your imperial hoard -but the nonetheless existing banks (bartering banks?) will bleed you dry for trying to finance your next expansion. AND your bureaucracy will suffer greatly without money to bribe officials. Opposing the Meklar (Money? What is that?) on the capitalist spectrum are their once-brethren, the Cynoids. THEY are obsessed with money, like a whole race of Bill Gates. Thus follows, that MO3 teaches us that robots (Meklar) are bad with money, but cyborgs (Cynoids) are even better capitalists then we (Humans) are. Strange.

Here I needed to spend a few points because normally Meklar don´t use money. They barter. (See above.) But if the Meklar are highly individual monarchists who try to overthrow the Orion Senate instead of a collective of jackasses, they need more than the newest barter techniques. So the Meklar of Mordanth are now average Traders and capable of using credit cards without collapsing their entire empire.


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=71&pictureid=201
The Cynoids, capitalists of the Orion Sector


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=72&pictureid=209

“Treffsicherheit” or “accuracy” add either a bonus or a penalty to your races ground combat skills. Depending on if you want weak (schwach), normal (Durchschnittlich) or superior (überlegen) accuracy. The Meklar are robots -and their sensors are superior to the fleshy senses of weak meatbags.

“Kampffähigkeit” means “fitness to fight” and influences how fast ground units gain experience through fighting -or waiting in reserves. (Instead of sitting around, I guess they train or something like that.) Because the Meklar use only the best hardware for their artificial brains, it is naturally a superior feat for them. If you choose otherwise, you could gain points, but why bother? Unlike the other races I plan to use, you can combine superior research capabilities, superior production and superior ground forces in one tight, deadly package of Meklar-Rage. You don´t need to shuffle the ground combat points elsewhere, they can stay right here. (The other races will be a lot more squishy on planetary surfaces, as you will eventually see.)

A last note to ground combat in MO3: Every Species in the game has their own “hidden” stats and skills. Plus, races prefer an environment similar to those on their home world. They get penalties for fighting on worlds who are to extreme for them. For example, the fishy Trilarians have a secret bonus on evading enemies -and the Meklar prefer small, cavernous planets to fight on. A Meklar Army fighting on a Gas Giant will be in a huge disadvantage against the native Etherians (Eoladi and Imsaeis). (Of course, the other way round most races who can live on Gas Giants are on a large disadvantage everywhere ELSE.) There are lots more things to know, but luckily most enemies can be crushed by bringing in at least two times the troops. But if you consistently take hideous losses or your units can´t even successfully land half the time, now you know why. You can use this information to your advantage, if you find out on which planets your current enemy can fight best -and then attacking all other types of worlds in his empire first and with overwhelming force. The surviving worlds will be besieged and quickly succumb to hunger until they are weak enough to be finished off.

Ironically, with the Meklar, even our Meklar, you get one of the strongest armies available. That means, most of the time you can cheerfully ignore the advantage or disadvantage of your enemy, as long as you have more troops as him. One must simply not forget that there are other strong armies out there -the all-devouring Itkul for example, are a good match for an Meklar Army on even terms.

http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=71&pictureid=200
Here you can see an Ithkul, doing what it does best: Killing people. (The Ithkul ist the thing clinging to the humanoid body, slowly devouring him/her.)



http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=73&pictureid=210

As government, I take the absolutism-route. Absolutism means you can access either monarchistic (good for military, but everything else is Meh...) or fascistic governments. The constitutional monarchy is the middle ground -literal: They are average, with no strong penalties or bonuses, straight across the board. The easy way would be to take absolutism and then change your starting government from monarchy (most) or constitutional monarchy (humans) to fascism, to better control your population and wage war without a care about public opinion. Of course, even if the entire galaxy despises us, we are the good guys! So, constitutional monarchy it is. The other possibilities are: Representative governments give larger bonuses and make your people at the same time very upset if you declare war or build up your military to large to fast. We will be waging war against every other race in every game, so we can´t have that. Collectivism gives the largest bonuses but can have the largest penalties, too. (At least so I think -I wouldn´t know from personal experience – ´cause I never played with this line of governments.)

After that, I chose no government lobbies (I can´t even remember anymore if what of all these options you can chose without the Mod -the Ultima Mod reinstated many who were only planned and initially switched off in the release version because of the many bugs that prevented them from working properly.) and the universal law.


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=73&pictureid=211

That last part actually freed a few points to make more changes -normally, as a hivemind race, the Meklar get the best law -collective- for free. Short explanation: regional law gives exclusive rights to “higher” parts of the population -like in a middle-age monarchy for example- and makes the population slightly uneasy. Anarchy gives you a better chance to defend your worlds with militias, but makes your civilisation as hard to govern as a United States of America with a large stash of free weapons instead of a central government. Universal law and above gives a bonus to government efficiency (you spend less for your growing bureaucracy during the game) and the population is a bit more content.

Then I take one of the influential population groups (Bürgerschaften) you can select: They give, as a rule of thumb, a bonus to whatever they do best and make things worse somewhere else.
Because they can take it, I select Intellectuals -this choice makes research easier, since a considerable part of the populace is now always trying to “help” with their interest in science, acquired layman´s knowledge and whatever, but it also creates a lot of social chaos, making the people more restive.



http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=73&pictureid=212

Next on the seemingly neverending list are religions: Needless to say, you can´t chose actual religions, since they would be all changed beyond recognition or forgotten either way. Even if you sincerely believe the history of the Orion Sector will be the history of our own future. (Including the 10.000+ years of the Pax Humanica. You can read this stuff up in the included encyclopedia galactica, by the way.)


http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=74&pictureid=219

That wasn´t a joke. There is an actual encyclopedia in the game, similar to the Civilization series.

So, only general ways of believing can be chosen. First, monotheism (think Christianity or Islam) -it makes people more happy with their lot in live, but makes also a bit more uncreative. Then follows polytheism (think Hinduism) a choice that makes your recreational development areas on your planets more useful and creates a greater understanding for other races, what helps greatly with your diplomacy -and leads to a bit higher rate of internal strife, whenever believers of different beings clash with each other.

Atheism leads to no changes whatsoever. They believe in nothing, so they gain no bonus, but also aren´t prone to getting agitated because of their religion -´cause they have none. (The last part can be changed, if you give yourself fanatics -they are one of the choices under the influential population groups. Of course, most of the times you have to pay points to actively hurt yourself: Fanatics make your population easier to control and give you a greater militia if your worlds are invaded, but they are a huge pain in the ass for everything else.)


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Afterwards, you can give your civilisation a religious cult, a religious military order, for example. If you want to create your very own Jedi Order or some kind of an atheistic phyrexian knight order, this is the choice for you. Following in the same vein you can take one or more “dark cults”, like a cast system or an Inquisition. Sadly, for most religious cults you need precious points if you want to take them with the Meklar -and except the cast system most dark cult options are greyed out, therefore unsable. Logically, I skip these parts.


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Religious tolerance of the New and Improved Meklar will still be the default one: Intolerant. A choice that makes it more likely to detect the deeply religious spy hiding between a bunch of atheistic robots. Because an intolerant populace overall doesn´t even contemplate the possibility of being wrong, daily life will be a bit more quieter, and the population will grow 5% slower -I think because they need to repair the newly build Meklar who have shown religious tendencies, which takes time, or something like that. You can make up your own explanation, if you want.

“Ausgewogen” (balanced) is the default for most species: It changes nothing. The race will neither be overly suspicious, nor overly inviting to foreigners and their weird and unnatural conceptions of reality.

Tolerant people will create a melting pot of cultures, which will lead to a 5% higher population growth and other races will even respect your crazy race for crazy ideas like tolerating other people´s opinions. On the other hand, your melting pot can swiftly transform to a powder keg and enemy spies will hide in your pot-keg all the time.

The next point on the list is the proper philosophy. Taking Utopists is actually the best choice for a research oriented species, because utopists are always thinking up new ideas, what of course boosts research. To speed thinks a bit up, the other choices you could take are:

Materialists: They want to get rich, real fast. Three guesses what their bonus is.
Naturalists: Hippies gone wrong: Conservative in nature, hating all artificial innovations. Chop a tree down on their watch, and they will kill you.
Legalists: Only the strong may apply.

Now I chose a Tradition. Traditions are entirely optional. You can take more than one, of course. Meklar can´t chose “spiritual” -a choice that boosts research, by the way. All other options, Handwerker (artisanry), Bauer (farming), Händler (trading), Krieger (warrior traditions), are available, though. I take warrior tradition. My Meklar have a long tradition of war -and the refugees were some of the most deviant of their species, therefore they had to fight constantly for survival until their arrival on their new sanctuary. And this tradition makes their armies even more a force to be reckoned with.


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Social structure will be social: it offsets the lower population growth I got from playing an intolerant robot mob and it will make my society trying to change other cultures to better fit in with their own. That nets me a walloping 10% bonus on immigration -that means the population of other races will be more likely to travel to my worlds, instead of sitting on their home worlds. My gain, their pain.

Kosmopolitan would mean incorporating other cultures completely and without changing them into their own. (Meklar can´t be stupid enough to open that can of worms, for them this option is greyed out.) A traditional society will try to oppress minorities and a fascistic one hates everything and everyone. Your population growth suffers and your emigration rate is 10% up. After everyone has run away, the rest is content with their fate and rebellion will be unlikely.



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Next are the talents: Positive and negative ones. The positive talents encompass things like an antaran background (more likely to stumble upon forgotten antaran technologies and only meant for the Harvesters (Damn those Ithkul!), adaptability (good to reduce the penalties pollution places on your populace), navigation (Makes your ships faster in the warp, naturally.), sixth sense (bonus for diplomacy, you always know were enemy spies hide and enemy ships can be more easily found ) and technology/engineering (Research capabilities are up 10% and you get a 10% bonus for robotic technologies. I think that means you are more likely to get robotic technologies in your tech tree (every new race gets a new tech tree with the start of the game) but I´m not entirely sure, truth be told. It could mean something else -but I´m starting to ramble again. Let´s get back on track.)



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Negative Talents: Normally, you only take them to free point you need elsewhere in this gigantic list of possible changes in your civilisation/species. But occasionally, they can have their virtues, too.
Trägheit (“idleness”) makes a race lazy: Recreational DEAs (Development Areas, can be set on a world to develop specific things like factories in a specific zone on the planet, like an industrial DEA, for example.) have a greater output of delicious happiness, but everything else suffers. Working is hard, okay?

Individualism is the entire point for this part of the Meklar species: They fled because they wanted not to be part of the collective, after all. It gives you more research per population, but also raises social unrest by a great margin. Well, that is the price of freedom.

Pessimism is exactly was it says on the tin: For a race selecting this doom will wait everywhere. The Meklar refugees lift a long time seeing the Sector going straight to hell, so their unsunny outlook on life should be understandable. The population will be harder to control, enemy spies will have a hard time hiding inside the Meklar realm and unrest will be raised again. Other species won´t like this kind of attitude much, by the way. Pessimistic robots remind them to much of Marvin.

The options I didn´t take include: Pacifism would be suicide for a species like the Meklar, hated by most of the galaxy and to incompetent at diplomacy to even pretend to play by the rules. And Perversions are a bit to much, even for me.

Then there will be a non-choice between starting as a member of the Orion Senate, not starting as a member and letting king luck decide. Our Meklar have fled their own species, so of course their not part of the senate -the senate doesn´t even know of their existence at this point!

The second-to-last choice concerns mineral abundance and biodiversity on your starting world. Mineral abundance should always be as high as possible: Even species “mining” organics need minerals, since the organisms mined need minerals in their bodies to begin with. Which they only can have if their environment has those minerals in it. (Sorry, even if you build organic ships, like the etherian species do, you still need mining.) You can seriously cripple yourself if you take other options here. Biodiversity is actually some kind of beginners trap: It doesn´t change how many of your people you can feed, only how many money through rare biological products can be earned. If you chose a high biodiversity, you only get a small bonus on trading and money earned through the taxation of your agrarian industry. For a starting race, the bonus is pretty much non-existent. You can therefore set this option as low as possible and use the points elsewhere.


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Last comes James Bond´s favourite option: The Spy Business. Meklar start with phenomenally dangerous spies, so most of the points I spend came from here. I selected the second-to last option, which still gives you normal spies: No James Bond will emerge from my race, but Abott and Costello will stay out of the business, too. I don´t recommend getting greedy and taking the last option for maximum poinage: That would make the TIA your spy organisation. Good luck with that. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_%26_Phil)

Now with the Meklar of Mordanth finally set up, we can start to command and conquer!

[The Grey Prophet]

Chapter III: The First War Begins



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Actually the Orion Sector is just a part of the galaxy, but I don´t want to nitpick.




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Cerva? What is a Cerva? This will not do. Renaming will commence in 1... 2...





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Here we have the Mordanth System, after the fall of Meklon new centre of the Meklar race. Or so they think...




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Now let´s take a look on our starting world. Well... astonishingly, Mordanth even looks like it is some refuge at the ass end of the universe.
Where are we, anyway?




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Oh. Here are we. The outer frontier of the Orion Sector.





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Finally, after a long wait in hiding, the Imperial Parliament of Mordanth decided to claim back space. Normally, that would pose an extremely annoying problem, since the people of the Imperium had decided upon their arrival to voluntarily erase the memories of the advanced technologies the Meklar had used before, to minimize the chance that their civilisation may be detected by their enemies before the time was right. But in the first Galactic Cycle after the Imperial Parliament instated a Monarch called the Imperator as a military leader and figurehead of the Imperium, the legacy of the legendary Meklar scientist BONEBREAKER was found in its resting place of the first Imperator of the Mordanth Imperium, the Mechanical Monument. The legacy consisted of detailed plans and descriptions on the principles of FTL-Travel -it freed the scientists of the young Imperium from the arduous task of relearning something that had originally taken literally hundreds of cycles to be discovered.
Now the new Imperator A1414-IH9-L120OR was tasked with the enormous duty of commanding the imperial fleets to victory. Even with all other races still in the process of freeing themselves from the chains the New Orions had bound them with, the task of destroying the Orion Senate and replacing it with the Mordanth Imperium will take a very long time...





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Luckily, we don´t have to build everything from scratch: In about half a cycle the Imperium converted a sublight ore-trailer and an old sublight transport ship to prototypes of an interstellar colony and an interstellar outpost ship. After a few considerations, the Imperator commanded the conversion of two old system survey ships into FTL-Reconnaissance ships.





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Immediately, the Imperator commanded the ships through the three star lanes of the Mordanth System to explore the neighbouring stars. But in the last moment, the Imperial Parliament overrode this first imperial decision partly: The colony ship should instead of leaving the system be used in colonising the other two usable planets of the Mordanth System. Until now, nothing could have been done about them, because the danger of detecting the spreading population had been considered to high. Furious about the loss of the FTL-Drive onboard the colony ship, the Imperator commanded the home world to commence building a small sublight ship for system colonization, to prevent further intrusions upon its command. In the name of BONEBREAKER the first ships then finally left the system, and the colony ship landed on one of the unclaimed worlds of the Mordanth System.





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Now we will soon have three instead of one starting world -a great help if you plan to take on eight enemies simultaneously later in the game.




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A few other things need planning, to reduce the chance of hideous humiliation. For example, after starting, I changed the government from old-style monarchy to constitutional monarchy and dialled the oppressometer back down. The oppressometer influences how your empire deals with its population: Between the far right (George Orwell´s 1984) and the far left (the government lets you do anything outside of outright breaking the laws) everything is possible. Except for the triangle-borders you can see above. These triangles change position regarding how your race “feels”. If you took to many choices during your species adjustment that increase unrest, these borders will wander to the left, if you reduced unrest enough, the border will wander to the right, allowing more oppression without the punishment the population normally will mete out against every emperor foolish enough to adjust the slider to far outside these borders. Long story short: The more you place the cursor left, the more happy your people will be, the more right, the better you can capture enemy spies. But civil unrest will increase dramatically, too.




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Development plans will come in handy, sooner or later, too. If you forget a few of your planets later on, a few logically structured development plans will aid the AI in controlling those “lost” worlds, thus minimizing the damage of your idiotic underlings.




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Finances are solely the domain of the Imperial Parliament, at least for now. Seriously, as long as there is no war or everything works, you should leave your finances alone. Playing around with taxation in this game can have grave consequences -there are many similarities to how a real-life government works, so you can dive into the red sea of debt, if you want. A financial collapse during a war will of course severely hampering your options, e. g. border worlds will be forced to strip down their defence, what with no money to maintain them and all. And there will be unrest, upheaval and outright rebellions, if you are stubborn enough at spending more then you earn. So, as I said, I will do nothing at this point.





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Now to the research output of the Imperium: We will be breezing through the first levels of our tech tree, thanks to our superior research and creativity, so we will plan for the future here: Biology, Social, and Economic Sciences will getting the shaft -but there aren´t that many technologies for conquest in there. Everything useful will come sooner or later -but especially Physics contains many needed ship technologies, so the most reseach will go in here.




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During the first few cycles, the Mordanth Imperium successfully explored the Gion and Xenon Systems -and even found a few useful worlds. The Survey Ships finished their work and immediately set course on to the next star lanes.




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A green world. Even more than useful. Mineral abundance only average could hurt a bit during the early game, though.




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Xenon IV seems a good place for either a production centre or a research world. Mineral abundance poor is of course bad for mining. Maybe I will set a few agrarian DEAs here, to get a agricultural surplus.




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A new star lane appeared.
Between two stars I never even heard about. Well, not my problem.




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An unknown ship appears! Wow, that was fast. Normally, you don´t find enemies after several dozen rounds.




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Time for a new scout force, me thinks. A small, almost unarmed frigate will now start to explore new star lanes. It is also the sole member of the proud Task Force “1st Imperial Exploration Force”.




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With the advent of the 15th Cycle after reclaiming Space, an alien spaceship was sighted in the Inari System, only two star lanes distant from Mordanth. The ship was of unknown design and the Imperator immediately send a new scout to investigate.




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In the meantime, let´s build star ships! In truth, mostly our home world churns out only one thing: New colony ships, alternating with a few new scout ships. Other designs aren´t needed before the first real enemy shows up anyway.




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The longer we wait, the more powerful our first real warships will be.

Next time: TEH ENEMY reveals himself!

[The Grey Prophet]

Well, I´m back. Sorry for the long delay, but there were some... other things I had to attend to.


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So, to recapitulate: Our first enemy was sighted and our population protested against researching evil flak batteries.



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With that established, let´s colonise the Xenon System!



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Well, it´s a rather small world, but at least it will be useful if I´m running low on food. (Slowly I´m starting to suspect the Meklar are having an addiction to fast food. It´s not real food after all, the same the Meklar are not real people: They are robots. Or are they making the fast food for other races and selling it to them? And are somehow addicted to making money? (No, wait. That would be the Cynoids. Wrong race.) Or maybe I´m talking bullshit. Let´s get on with it. )



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I almost forgot: A few weirdos happened to run into the office of the emperor some time ago. To stop everyone from tripping over those fleshlings waiting for welfare or something they now have new government jobs. The squid-like thing on the right is a female Nommo, by the way.



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During the galactic cycle 21 a rogue AI harmed imperial research somewhat, but luckily, after a messy clean-up-operation the research data could be restored.


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Slowly the forces of the Mordanth Imperium explored the surrounding systems and expanded the imperial borders at the same time.



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New worlds were found to colonise...



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...and new weirdos appeared applying for jobs.



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And sometimes, this happens. Occasionally there will be empty systems throughout the Orion Sector. The only thing they are good for is stationing a border force here -if an enemy force is large enough to drive you out, at least you don´t jeopardize colonised worlds in this empty void of a solar system.


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Sometimes, you will get a leader you can´t use. This one for example, will increase your espionage power but because he is quite the jerk, unrest will increase also. Solution? Downsizing. (Ah Downsizing, is there nothing you can´t solve?)



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In the 42nd Cycle, the scout forces of the Imperium finally made contact with the strange ship of alien design, but the ship evaded the scout force and jumped out of the Iora System. Soon after this encounter, the force reported the presence of a small colony of organic beings on one of the local worlds.



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A second, more detailed report stated the beings being of a parasitic nature, feeding on other intelligent species. The Imperial Parliament felt a slight unease after confirming the report with a second scout expedition. The Beings called themselves the Ithkul and even at the mercy of the expedition´s ships weapon batteries, they remained aggressive and uncooperative.

What a coincidence! The first other race I meet, and they are Ithkul!
There aren´t many of those buggers now, but I can´t take any chances. My first fleet will be tasked with bombing them away.



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But before that, we have to colonise many more worlds -and actually start building a fleet of warships.


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Wow, almost useless. Well, there still many unexplored systems out there...


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MANY unexplored systems...



Next time... Will there be war? Or will the Ithkul continue to run away from the mighty Mordanth Imperium?

[synkr0nized]

Hey there. This seems fun so far [reading as I post]. I have not played the third Orion ever, so while some things are different to me I am still getting that good MoO feel.

[01d55]

Hey there. This seems fun so far [reading as I post]. I have not played the third Orion ever, so while some things are different to me I am still getting that good MoO feel.
MOO3 was a disaster. Just a total clusterfuck of black box mechanics and outright bugs.

I used to own it, then I lost the discs. I never tried very hard to find them.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Why are there no klackons? All other races bow before Klackon overlord!

[synkr0nized]

MOO3 was a disaster. Just a total clusterfuck of black box mechanics and outright bugs.

Hmm. Perhaps that's why folks push for GalCiv2 instead?

[01d55]

Hmm. Perhaps that's why folks push for GalCiv2 instead?

I have some problems with that but yeah, it's a decent space based 3E game.

[The Grey Prophet]

MOO3 was a disaster. Just a total clusterfuck of black box mechanics and outright bugs.

I used to own it, then I lost the discs. I never tried very hard to find them.

Luckily my version of the game was subject to many changes and bugfixes, but I played the original version, too. So yeah, it was full of bugs. One could say, more bugs than stars in the galaxy, but that would be a (little) exxageration.

Sigh. For a certain amount of time I did enjoy blasting huge and harmless transport fleets away with ridiculously overpowered missile weapons, but winning every time without effort became soon boring and I shelved the game until I found the Ultima Orion Mod two years ago. Sadly, as I said before, only the bugfixes, not the Mod itself can be used if you don´t speak German -of course if you speak German, then you will have no problems whatsoever.

Why are there no klackons? All other races bow before Klackon overlord!

Funny that you mention it, I didn´t include them under the "chosen four" because I strongly dislike them. My antipathy was even strong enough that I (at least for this first war) made sure through the altered starter of the Ultima Orion Mod that they won´t appear at all, not even as enemies.

But I plan on changing the set of enemies for the next war, to keep things fresh. So you will see your beloved Klackons -only far, far in the future of this thread and as enemies.

The next post will follow shortly with news from the Meklar War, by the way.

[The Grey Prophet]

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We´re back and as you can see, the Ithkul started colonising a second world near my borders. Oh, you bastards will BURN!



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But the Ithkul are fortunate: Still a few rounds before I can build warships with better death-tools then simple Laser and Mass Driver weapons. (The sticks and stones of the space warfare.)

With the new Fusion Cannons the Meklar ships will bath their enemies with the power of suns! Quite literally, since they are using fusion processes not unlike those in a thermonuclear bomb.


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Until we have our new fancy toys, the Mordanth Imperium will grudgingly continue its peaceful expansion.



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But just in case, the Imperium will start recruting a few spies, to defend our advanced technologies against filthy thieves.



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During a secret meeting of government officials with Imperator A1414-IH9-L120OR concerning the growing infestation of parasitic Ithkul at the imperial borders, a giant sentient combat satellite slipped undetected through the defenses of the Mordanth System and appeared above the imperial capital.

The satellite called itself Mosllawi Meko and asked for employment. Mosllawi Meko as it turned out, was suffering from intense boredom and would do anything to be released from it. Even bombarding the Meklar main world with its heavy weaponry.

And so the Imperator and the Imperial parliament were forced to accept the insane proposal and the government got a new tax collector. Soon afterwards, the Meklar tasked with monitoring the long-range sensor stations lost their jobs.



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And now I colonised one of the last remaining worlds of the Mordanth System. Mordanth I is the first and largest planet of my starting system. And in the future, it will be the new imperial main world, because after a few special technologies and massive amounts of terraforming improved living conditions enough, it will be far more productive then my starting world.

(The reason why I´m planning to relocate the imperial capital? There are a few technologies which only affect the main world of an empire. And I plan on fully exploiting these technologies.)



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A new empire has made contact! Probably the Ithkul. Maybe I should start my fleet building program early?



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Hey! That´s not the Ithkul! How could our ships miss enemy colonies right behind our border? I think some of my scout crews need replacement -or start to do their damned work!



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Well, look at that smug bastard! All "Your ships sure couldn´t see us coming. Maybe you should clean your sensors?" Damn those humans...

During the 61st Cycle, Imperator A1414-IH9-L120OR was surprised to read in some old routine messages from the imperial scout forces that apparently the organic species known as "Humans" were found slowly colonising planets just beyond the border of the Imperium. In reaction to this astonishing news, the Imperator arranged a meeting with the admiral commanding the scout forces.



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Let´s trade with them. They will declare war soon enough -every round in peace will be a boon.

Afterwards, on the same day, the Emperor met with the human envoy of the Loskisa Empire, who had arrived some sub-cycles earlier regarding a planned trade treaty. At the same meeting the human envoy was introduced to the new imperial scout admiral.



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Okay, the Ithkul still play hide-and-seek. Let´s go look for them! First, we make ALL old designs obsolet to make room for replacements.




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Next, we need a new, faster colony ship.



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A new sublight colony ship (SCS) will come in handy, too. So why not?



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As a small distraction, the answer of the Loskisa Empire comes in. To summarize: "You may look like ugly kitchen utensils and I have to puke just looking at you, but we are greedy. We will therefore trade with you hideous bunch of messed-up robots."



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Back to our fleet building program. The Imperial Marine Ship Lightning is a cruiser with four Fusion Cannons mounted along the ship´s spine as main armament and with additional three light Fusion Cannons to defend the ship against missiles and fightercraft.

As it is still early in the game, the ship is only protected by light titansteel armour and a small generator projecting a weak magnetic field. Good against charged particles, useless against everything else. (Actually it is more useful then a real electromagnetic field would be, defense-wise. But there are weapons later on which completely ignore this type of shield, so the description is still better then the original "Class I Shield: It protects against stuff, but not very good.")



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In between waiting for the Meklar scientists to finish reinventing the first batch of new weapons, I build quite a lot of ground troops. Now we need transport ships to deliver them to our enemies. This Military Transport Ship is insanely slow -but on the other hand, transport ships should only arriving in a war zone when the battle in space is over. In case of an emergency, ships of this class are generally still fast enough to slowly crawl out of the way of real warships. And if they can´t jump out of a contested system in time before destruction, all the sublight-engines of the multiverse couldn´t save them, so why bother?




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A small but necessary addition for the imperial fleet: The Watcher-Class frigates. Small but prickly ships that are cheap and fast to build. Ideal to protect borders and far-out systems not developed enough to build their own defenses.



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The Light Attack Craft Needle is the sublight version of the Watcher frigates. Since they have more space available, they are more heavily armed as their FTL-brethren. In lieu of expensive space stations, they will be the first line of defense, striking an invading force with devastating counter attacks. (Of course only if I build enough of them before they are obsolet.)




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Now the Mordanth Imperium will commence building all those fance new designs.




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In the meantime, the border region near the Ithkul is still quite empty. See the green line? That´s the star lane connecting to the next Ithkul-infested system. Something has to change.



7194

So I will simply send a few colony ships to a empty system full of good, mineral-rich planets -right next to the Ithkul-Outposts. Hopefully, they will get there before the next wave of Ithkul-Colonists and halt the advance of their infestation. And right after, I WILL have to exterminate the Ithkul before the hidden migration mechanics of MO3 start sending Ithkul to my planets, creating unrest. (Because the Ithkul can´t eat Meklar. And if the Ithkul can´t eat other intelligent beings, they are unhappy. Weirdos.)



http://forum.nuklearpower.com/picture.php?albumid=90&pictureid=294

Concentrating on the Ithkul-menace, I will try my best to stay on the good side of my human enemies. The human envoy: "Wow, you ARE stupid! Of course we want a research treaty! We are so far behind, combined research will mostly benefit US!" For now.



7192

In preparation of things to come, I re-calibrate my finances from the old "Laid-Back-Super-Peace" to "Reasonable Careful".

Next: Will the peace with the Loskisa Empire hold? Or will the Ithkul be surprised when fiery death rains upon them?

[The Grey Prophet]

7197

And now we are back and designing our first carrier ship. Carrier ships are THE weapon that can singlehandedly win an entire war: In contrast to indirect fire ships, which need ammunition for their missile launchers, carrier ships can indefinitly spawn new fighters. Given enough time, carrier task forces can wear down even the most hardy enemy defenses.

Especially in the early game, when your ships only have weak armour and shields, carrier ships are crucial, because they can hit enemy planets without coming into range of their enormous planetary direct fire batteries. With luck or enough speed, they can even stay outside of missile range -only planetary defense fighters can strike them in thos cases. And if the attacking task forces are numerous enough, they can destroy the attacking fighters with ease -but the slow firing planetary batteries can not destroy the advancing fighters of the invasion force fast enough. At this point, victory for the invader becomes unavoidable.



7198

At the same time, I designed a second sublight defense ship type: A slow moving artillery ship to bombard enemy forces from behind the lines of the faster, lighter system defense forces. (Actually I never needed to test the concept behind this idea of mine, because worlds defended with enough LACs to TEST it were either to far away inside my realms to be attacked, or the ships were to old to be more than floating targets for my enemies.)




7199

And now my robotic people are protesting against... soil enrichment?

Well, as if my agrarian development areas weren´t feeble enough already, my population is dead set against upgrading them. Maybe some scandal involving good old Ronald made them angry?




7200

Aaaaaaan our human friends are back, telling us in the most snobish way possible that our diplomatic relations are soaring. (I strongly suspect our "peace" rests entirely on the complete absence of warships on both sides of the border.)





7201

Good news: One of my scouts found better shield generators than my old, small ones.

Bad news: Now I have to update all of my ship designs.

During the 78 cycle of imperial history, a small and insignificant scout ship encountered a phenomenally strange anomaly in some far away unsettled border system. In a astonishingly short amount of time, the scientists of the Mordanth Imperium used the new data collected by researching the anomaly to develop a completely new way of building stronger shield generators: To increase the power of the shields, they simply had to build them BIGGER. After the public announcement of this new scientific advancement, most of the population of the Imperium engaged in a ancient sport called "sensor rolling".