Are you MAN ENOUGH to CONQUER THE GALAXY? Let's Play Space Empires V!

[greed]

Originally Posted by Krylo

No, you have it backwards.

Our dakka should be so large and so prevalent that the ships are the accessory.

We shall not put guns on our ships. We shall put ships on our guns.

Edit: But yes, they shall be painted red.

Also, our ground troops should have exo-suits/mechs capable of AT LEAST holding a gatling gun in each arm and one on each shoulder. At least.

Or they may be genetically modified to do it without suits. Whichever.

Genetically engineered to do it without suits. And be red.

[Sir Pinkleton]

I think we've created a new way to LP with these journal entries thing. We should spread it to the internet, where it will be warped into something deplorable and stupid!

Also, I think we should get as many resources as soon as possible.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Originally Posted by Krylo

No, you have it backwards.

Our dakka should be so large and so prevalent that the ships are the accessory.

We shall not put guns on our ships. We shall put ships on our guns.

Edit: But yes, they shall be painted red.

Also, our ground troops should have exo-suits/mechs capable of AT LEAST holding a gatling gun in each arm and one on each shoulder. At least.

Or they may be genetically modified to do it without suits. Whichever.

Of course, you are absolutely right, whatever was I thinking?! Guess I'm still thinking like a sane human being. Maybe we should make some dakka ships that aren't really ships any more at all and are instead just a floating mass of dakka with a couple of manouvering thrusters stuck to the side? Or how about, instead of increasing the "number" of dakka, we simply increase the "size" of the dakka, until it's no longer a ship and more of a single giant gun?

The Deathstar after all, was the epitome of More Dakka.


As for ground soldiers, why not have them be geneticlly engineered AND wearing suits??? Or genetically engineered cyborgs?? Of course, we'd still need some giant, non-bio based, mechs, so we can have fully blown Metal Gear type battletanks.... things!

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Hawk

Of course, you are absolutely right, whatever was I thinking?! Guess I'm still thinking like a sane human being. Maybe we should make some dakka ships that aren't really ships any more at all and are instead just a floating mass of dakka with a couple of manouvering thrusters stuck to the side? Or how about, instead of increasing the "number" of dakka, we simply increase the "size" of the dakka, until it's no longer a ship and more of a single giant gun?

The Deathstar after all, was the epitome of More Dakka.


As for ground soldiers, why not have them be geneticlly engineered AND wearing suits??? Or genetically engineered cyborgs?? Of course, we'd still need some giant, non-bio based, mechs, so we can have fully blown Metal Gear type battletanks.... things!

Now you're thinking with dakka.

[Wigmund]

Since I've never played any of the Space Empires games - what races are out there for us to genocide and loot their ruins assimilate into the fold of our glorious Federation so that we may all be enriched by their culture?

Originally Posted by Krylo

Now you're thinking with dakka.

[Geminex]

Presidential log: Stardate 77004.22675065784. Also known as January 2, 2400
Every day we progress. Every action we take, as a race, comes one step closer to earning us true glory in battle. Though there are exceptions, of course... Among them, sadly, my council. The fools! They fight this war as if it were on earth, for land, the way we have fought wars for 400 years. They are short-sighted. And I must defy them... They demand ships of destruction, hideously beweaponed. They desire increases in ground forces. The fools. We have a galaxy full of potential, and they demand bigger guns? One system will not save us once the aliens, the Xenos attack! We must expand...
I have ordered the engineering and construction of colony ships...


They are named Enterprise, for what they aim to achieve. And some other reason, which has slipped in my mind. They will serve us well.
The same applies to research. They are weak, and afraid, demanding greater weapons and armor. But before we can destroy, we must know our target. We must explore this galaxy. I have ordered the investment of the majority of our research budget into the creation of superior sensors... Though to prevent accusations of cowardice, I have been forced to order the creation of superior weaponry.

They are angered... I hope they will learn wisdom.
President’s log, 1st of February, 2400

Let there be celebration in the streets! Our research was successful! Our advance into space brought such new knowledge...

And the fruits of our labor are indeed worth having... New sensors, new weapons. But we must not lose sight of the goal. These advances are great, but they are but means to an end. For all my expansionism and love of research, this is merely a way to see our foes burn.
President’s log, 9th of February, 2400
They may be but means to an end... but yet I feel honoured to have witnessed this moment. Our shipyards completed the first ship of many, the beginning of our fleet. The Enterpise class colony ship rose slowly, majestically into the sky above our greatest city... and the whole world watched. It remained there, a beacon to us, the sun gleaming along its edges... Man’s greatest achievement to date. 9 million brave individuals, all of them trained and skilled, were loaded via shuttles. I watched one of the last batches personally, as 3000 of our citizens marched up the shuttle ramp in lockstep. Had we an anthem, they would have sung it. The determination on their faces was just as good, though. The knowledge what they were entering the unknown, not for their own sakes, or the sakes of their loved ones, but for the entire race. Means to an end, perhaps. Put noble means. I do hope the end can do it justice.
President’s log, 3st of March, 2400

It is done. Our first colony, our first step into the galaxy. The Enterprise 1, nicknamed “Columbus” landed on its target planet, disgorged its colony module and population load, was broken up for metal... and in its destruction, created the first instance of human extraterrestrial life. A proud moment indeed.

And not one, but two colonies were created in the last two months... 18 million pioneers, going... bravely... where no man has gone before. We have sufficient transport ships to keep them supplied with resources, which is why the first order I gave was to initiate the building of further shipyards, one on each planet. Research goes on... Our sensors grow even more powerful, our weapons more destructive, our armor more impenetrable. We are learning to fight...
President’s log, 12th of May, 2400
And we are gaining the means to do so... Two more colony ships, two more colonies, 18 million more brave warriors and explorers. Celebrations, globally, as we come to comprehend the fact that in the space of less than 5 months we have conquered our solar system.

But despite these... causes for celebration, the council becomes anxious. I promised our race a war... and now the first outliers are demanding one. And I must give in...
I have ordered the designing of a heavy space station. They want war and destruction, I shall place a huge chunk of metal armed with 16 guns into our atmosphere. If they agree.
I will go meet them now, our first major conference since the launch of our great empire.

I’ll drop the exact date, I’ll just give the months.
Also, the game takes place in 10-month increments, so gooooodbye june and july!
Also, we have our first few planets now, and some space, so what to do?
Two strategies I usually use is either sending out scouting ships, locating high-value planets (you can colonize planets with your planet type, ours is rock, but if the atmosphere’s unbreathable you can only build a quarter of your usual facilities on them. That’s quite a drop. Planets that you can colonize and breath (rock and oxygen) are fairly rare, we were lucky to have a large one in our first system.) and colonizing those quickly, as well as choke-points which we then secure, while sending out more scouts to locate and harass our enemies. Alternately, we just take every planet we see, colonize everything. Since any planet can have a shipyard, that can give us quite a lot of productivity, just at the cost of quick expansion and more valuable planets. Though we can still send out scouts and build invasion fleets. Whichever you prefer. Oh, and what should we do with the empty space we have? Research? I haven’t researched intel yet, though I could just do that.

And I'm not sure what our enemies are, but there're 15 of them. Would the council accept a diplomatic approach to some of them, just for fun?

[Krylo]

I agree with the creation of colony ships.

However--sixteen guns on a space station?

What kind of piddly little space station is that?

Double the number, at LEAST and we will talk. I count space for 22 more on that layout!

We shall call it the 'Gunstar 38' after the number of weapons aboard the station. Or the 'Gunstar 16' if you have some reason for applying such a small ordinance upon it.

Either way, disperse the guns more evenly around the station so we may fire in all directions, and never worry about being flanked.

ALSO more bombardment weapon research. I want to boil the seas of our enemies' planets and turn their sand to glass! Their flesh shall melt away and leave nothing behind but dust before a single soldier sets foot upon their planet!

I want massive rail guns capable of destroying a planetary core with a single round!

I want pure destruction!

[Wigmund]

Originally Posted by Krylo

ALSO more bombardment weapon research. I want to boil the seas of our enemies' planets and turn their sand to glass! Their flesh shall melt away and leave nothing behind but dust before a single soldier sets foot upon their planet!

Our first contact with any alien race should be a swarm of bomb laden kamikaze ships plummeting into their home planet's atmosphere.

Fuck diplomacy, we are here to kill all and loot the radioactive corpses and planets of our victims to fuel our blood lust.

[Ravashak]

Originally Posted by Krylo

ALSO more bombardment weapon research. I want to boil the seas of our enemies' planets and turn their sand to glass! Their flesh shall melt away and leave nothing behind but dust before a single soldier sets foot upon their planet!

I want massive rail guns capable of destroying a planetary core with a single round!

I want pure destruction!

I disagree with the reason for the bombardment research. We want our soldiers to crush their resistance utterly, so that those remaining will know how superior our forces are. I want to invoke enough terror with our ships approaching that they'll be surrendering before they even think about shooting at our ships.

Is it possible to use slap on Transport Modules for the forces to invade on our battleships? That would make for a nice way to make first contact, a ship getting to their planet, crushing their defense, then invading it before they know what happened.

ps. When did the Wilhelmus get ditched as anthem? xP

[Geminex]

I hate it when your demands are plausible enough for me to fullfill them.

Planet bombardment: Very fun technology, gives you a weapon that can attack only planets at really short range, but does around 200 damage. That's 200 million population with each shot, or alternately 200 kt of damage to facilities. Facilities usually have 1000, so every 5 shots kills one.

Railguns: I'm afraid that's not happening. Our current weapon (Depleted Uranium Cannon, DUC from now on) is already the closest thing we're gonna get to a railgun. And considering it does 33 damage at level... 4, I think, it's pretty much the equivalent of a nuclear strike, since it can either kill 33 million population, or destroy 33 thousand tons of enemy ship.

And on the topic, regarding ship design:
Every component, be it engines, armor, guns, anything, has a given size. This size is given in kt. Every hull (that is, every template for a ship type, be it colony ship, frigate, or space station) has a given maximum size. Our big "Kayne West" class space station has a maximum of 600 kt in space. I put 480 kt worth of guns in there, then the control modules (bridge, crew quarters, life support) and some ordnance storage, supply storage. Ordnance is not used for all weapons, but it's dedicated ammo. Supply is used for all weapons, but usually you don't have to worry about storing it, because you use supply to travel, and engines store quite a lot of it. Our DUC uses 1 ordnance and 2 supply per shot, but because it's a space station it doesn't have engines and I needed to put in separate storage. If this were actually contributing to the war I'd probably have put in no DUC at all, instead I'd have used missiles, which have longer range and don't miss. And instead of only guns I'd have put in some armor as well. Cause when your ship gets attacked and has no shields or armor left, the components are gonna take the damage. Every component has certain structure, usually it's as much as their size (DUC has 30 kt of structure), but increases as the component levels up. When components take more than 50% damage, they become unusable. This is very bad. It happened to me once or twice that in ship-to-ship combat my enemy was taking more damage than me, I was already hitting his components, but he was fleeing, so I was doing damage to his engines. (The component you damage depends on what direction you're hitting your target from, if they put the engines in the rear and get attacked from the rear, bye-bye engines). The enemy, on the other hand, managed to get a lucky volley and hit me in the front (there's no firing fields in this, I think, any gun you put anywhere can shoot in any direction, punch through my remaining armor and entirely screw my weapons. When you're on low armor, you need to be very careful.

Anyway, we can englarge the amount of space we have in our ships by... what do you think? Research! We can put research points into the frigate, every level we rise we get 25 kt (that almost one DUC) more, and once we reach level 5 we can research destroyers. When we reach level 5 in that, light cruisers! Then cruisers. Then Battleships. Then dreadnaughts. Every class obviously has more space than the last.
Frigate, destroyers and light crusers get bonuses to evasion, which is really usefull. Cruisers get no bonus. Battleships and Dreadnaughts actually lose evasion, as well as their maximum speed dropping. The same goes for space stations, the more we research, the bigger we can build. The thing about space stations is that they can't move, but they have huge amounts of space. Good for defense.

But anyway.

It's actually possible to make kamikaze ships, they come in two varieties: Ship and drone. A drone is a separate ship class, it's basically slightly smaller than a frigate, with a much higher maximum speed (you can fit more engines in it). You only need a 10 kt control module, which helps. You put warheads on it, send it to ram your enemy, enjoy the explosion. Kamikaze frigates are basically frigates that you affix bombs to, and send them to ram. I like using neither, because kamikaze frigates won't give you value for money and drones need research, and aren't that great either. We can build a few, though.

And may I draw you attention to the fact that with military technology, it's possible to create boarding modules, which let your ship to up to the other ship and board it, taking it over? For great justice!

Edit: @ Ravashak: We can compromise. We can bomb the small planets without much space, because it'd be a pain to have to invade those, but we can land troops on the big ones. It's possible to let any ship land troops, but I've resolved to use only freighter hulls for transport. Harder that way, since freighters are slow, expensive and as such fairly vulnerable. Though we could just create a fleet of attack freighters...

And if anything, our anthem should be "The ultimate showdown"