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5 May 06
Victories are never complete until the enemy is crushed (and driven and lamentations, etc.). I still had some crushing to do. Mon El was officially neutral, but my fleet held the space. The repair fleet had arrived to patch things up. The colonists had arrived to claim the planet for the empire. As soon as they were sent down, I got the message, 'Enemy Armada detected.' Sixty ships inbound to Mon El.
What are my options? I could abandon the planet and colonists, but besides being cowardly, I would have to take it again probably with even more defenses. I could try to intercept the fleet in deep space. If I did that, I'd need almost all my forces leaving Mon El essentially undefended. The Liir have other planets close by. Another, smaller fleet could take the planet and leave me in a bind even if I defeated the armada. No, the only real option is to defend the planet. I can get another couple cruisers there and hope for the best.
The colony is too small to start producing ships. That means no defense platforms. Small platforms wouldn't stop the armada, but they could keep break away ships engaged to keep the colony alive. Without them, even victory in the large battle will come with the price of at least the colony. With a grim determination, I give the orders to build the replacement colony ships. The Empire will fight until Mon El is gripped firmly in our claws.
The defense fleet has a small screen of destroyers, eight combat cruisers and three dreadnoughts. Due to command limits, the last dreadnought, several combat cruisers and some repair cruisers will be kept in reserve. We haven't seen any Liir dreadnoughts, but they hadn't seen any of ours until we attacked Mon El. If they don't have dreads, we stand a slim chance. If multiple dreads are in their fleet, we might have to fight a delaying action, hope to take out one dread and abandon the system. If there's just one dread or none, we'll fight to the last soldier.
As the alert sounds, we get our first good look at the enemy. No dreads! Morale soars in the fleet. It looks like around twenty cruisers and the remainder destroyers. There are more variants out there than you can shake a stick at. Some we've never seen before. The heavens will burn over Mon El this day.
We give full power to engines as we break away from the planet hoping to keep combat out of weapons range of the surface. Our first ranged weapons fire as soon as the enemy appears on the sensors. A couple destroyers on both sides disappear in the first salvo. Our ranks our spreading due to the difference in speed. Our dreads can't keep up, but they have plenty of long range weapons to keep them in the fight.
We take out two Liir cruisers as we form up in our defensive formation at tactical point alpha. Unfortunately, even as the second cruiser breaks out our last destroyer goes down. It's up to the cruisers and our dreads. Suddenly four Liir reinforcement destroyers come burning it at high speed. We try to keep them all targeted to prevent them from breaking our lines. Three burn, but one breaks through. I send an armored cruiser in pursuit but the speed difference is too great. The small planetary colony dies under the guns of a single destroyer. The Liir will pay for that.
Even the sight of the destroyer burning brings no satisfaction as there still a long battle to be fought. The pursuit cruiser swings back around and into position again. Our concentrated fire takes out three more cruisers. Our dreads are doing fine, but a couple of cruisers are taking a beating. I move them back to long range. Eventually both sides move out of weapons range as we regroup for the next day's fighting. Our repair cruisers spend long hours trying to undo the harm of the day's battle, but their best efforts are not enough. We're still battered as we head into battle again. The Liir lost twenty ships including eight cruisers this day. We lost five destroyers and a cruiser.
Without a colony to defend, we stay closer to the planet to rejoin the battle. We'll let them wade through the barrage of our long range weapons the entire approach. Their destroyers start popping like so many fireworks as they approach. That's not even counting the dreadnought fire since they're focused on cruisers. Damage and destroyed ships are ruining the Liir lines. The reinforcements are coming in haphazardly. Without overlapping lines and focused fire, our gunners are doing more damage more steadily than theirs.
There's a Liir cruiser down, then another and another. My cruisers are taking a beating, but they don't fall and the dreads stand strong. What's this? Their reinforcement cruisers are turning around. Their mighty armada is running. Full power to engines. They will not all escape this battle. Two more Liir cruisers explode as I give chase. Ships start popping off my screen as their teleport engines engage, but one cruisers sits there without engines. You'll have to be our final sacrifice today. It seems every weapon available hits it at once and the cruiser briefly glows like a new sun. When the light fades, there is nothing left. We take tally again. Amazingly we lost no ships to twenty-two of theirs destroyed. Some are barely limping to the repair cruisers but they live.
I'm sorry. I lost myself there and was reliving the battle. Please forgive an old warrior. We tracked their retreat and projected their course. The remnants were headed to Mintarr. The fleet that would deal with them was being constructed even during the battle. It would be ready to launch soon after. But that is another story.
One last thing. During the second part of the battle, some have read too much into the incident at Deneb. Yes, an exploration fleet was attacked there. The details have not yet been declassified, but reports of strange creatures or Liir secret weapons are unfounded. Our fleet was victorious. That should be enough for any citizen of the empire. This 'secret' image is almost certainly a forgery:
Jason
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4 May 06
Some people have noticed the poll in the news section regarding my Sword of the Stars game that I've been writing up. I didn't realize you had so little faith in me. With the might of my many fleets, I don't need your cheers.
I've explored a little over one third of the 150 star galaxy. I should have my 40th colony shortly. There are internal rankings in the game. Right now I'm first in all categories. That's not surprising since things have taken a turn for the better after the second battle of Mon El.
You may recall Mon El as the centerpiece of the Tarka/Liir stalemate. My cruiser assault forces weren't cracking that defense. Then I researched Dreadnoughts. I suppose I should clear something up here. It might seem like you rush to dreads, pump them out and win the game. It's not quite that simple. First, research gets more expensive as the tech climbs higher. If you tried to rush too early, your economy couldn't support a reasonable rate for growth and research or it would just take forever to get the research done. Even if you ignored that and got them researched, chances are you wouldn't have the economic strength to build and maintain them. Finally, a dreadnought with inferior weapons and slow engines is just a big target that takes a while to destroy.
Back to the Liir. They're at a similar tech level to me. They could have dreads, but I had the bigger economy and got them powering out of space dock first. I didn't waste that advantage. There were two key planets in the Liir defense. Mon El was one and Mintarr was the other. They were both sizable planets with rich resources and large garrisons to protect them. They were also hubs to route ships around if other planets were attacked. If they could be taken out, the Liir would have to do everything possible to take them back. The other border colonies would be more vulnerable to attack and the entire Liir economy would be weakened.
Before I started building the attack fleet, I had updated all my designs to use the most powerful weapons available. While not strictly necessary, if you're already springing for the expensive ship, you might as well get the best weapons to try to keep it alive. I also wanted to make sure all ships were outfitted with the improved reflective coating. The Liir at this point had gone heavily in to beam weapons. I didn't want to take more damage than I had to.
I designed the fleet for planetary assault and heavy combat. While the command ships had less weapons, most of the rest were either heavy armor or barrage. Barrage gives up some of the armor and balance of weapons to emplace more heavy weapons. With the time limit on battles, you can't take too long if you want to damage or take out a planet. In addition to command craft, you also need fuel and repair craft. If you're planning to keep the world, it's also a good idea to have some colonization craft ready to go. Soon Task Force Mon El was filtering in to Altair from the surrounding planets. I could see that the Liir were also gathering a fleet, but I didn't intend to let them finish that job.
With antimatter warp engines, the task force arrived the turn after launch. Since the defending fleet hadn't had time to gather all the neighboring forces, I found about 8 cruisers and a dozen destroyers waiting for me. My initial battle configuration gave me four cruisers, two dreads and a couple destroyers. My destroyers were wiped out trying to close in on the enemy. Given the great range of my weapons, they opened up early and often as we closed. I noted that he hadn't upgrade the speed of his ships from our last battle. This time I would have the speed advantage.
The Liir destroyer screen tore like tissue paper before the combined fire of my cruisers and dreads. Once that first wave was wiped out, things got a little easier. The destroyers coming in as reinforcements wouldn't be as organized or concentrated. Similarly additional cruisers came online as I took down the first batch that charged me. It looked like he was working on some kind of flanking or encirclement maneuver, but that didn't bother me since I was charging for the planet. I need to take out the defensive satellites and tear into the planet. I didn't want him to have the repair ability or the production capacity Mon El would provide if I failed. Once I got in range, it was impressive seeing the weapons and explosions light up the planet. After what seemed like forever of getting pounded from behind, Mon El went dark. I tried to turn to take out the remaining cruisers, but they were all turning to abandon the fight. I was able to chase down two more before the rest jumped out.
The final battle stats showed twenty enemy ships destroyed to only six lost. Of those, only one was a cruiser. The enemy satellites were destroyed, the planet's infrastructure heavily damaged and 800 million Liir colonists were wiped out. I spent the next two turns fighting the remainder of the defense force and the reinforcements that were already en route. I realized just how important Mon El was to him when a new fleet showed up on my scans. It read sixty ships inbound. You'll just have to wait for that story.
Jason
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3 May 06
Another update on the Tarka/Liir war. I didn't have much time to play today, but that doesn't mean interesting things didn't happen. My assault fleet arrived at Mon El to find the Liir had significantly reinforced the planets garrison. It had only a few defense platforms but a dozen cruisers and about fifteen destroyers. The mighty assault fleet didn't look so mighty any more. My five cruisers and dozen destroyers were in trouble. That might not sound so bad, but one of the cruisers was a repair craft and a couple of the destroyers were fuel tankers.
The initial plan was to sweep by the planet on a tangent. I would try to take out the end of his defense line and get a few shots in on the planet while deploying my assault shuttles. It worked pretty well since my missiles fired at range. I took out about three destroyers on my way in. I roughed up a cruiser and deployed my shuttles. I probably could have pounded the planet for a while, but I wanted to take out that cruiser to even the odds. I swung around and tried to array myself as best I could with my armored destroyers and cruisers to the front. I took out the cruiser, but not before finding out he had upgraded his medium weapons to fusion cannons (upgraded plasma cannons). That was not good. Since I was still heavy on missiles, that meant that I had to stay at long range to keep up my weapons advantage. But, as I mentioned yesterday, he had upgraded his engines. So his cruisers could out pace mine. It was a bloody battle, but as the timer ran out, I had taken out another cruiser and destroyer and merely taken a lot of damage on my ships.
After the turn change, I was glad I had that repair ship. I was able to repair all the damage except one armored destroyer. Unfortunately, I noticed a relief fleet vectored in on Mon El. Scanners showed a dozen ships arriving in two turns. I had one more chance to damage the planet before I would probably be wiped out. That didn't go well. The Liir used their speed advantage to close and focus fire on my repair ship. Its guns went out quickly then all I heard were the dying screams as the ship broke apart. I was able to damage another cruiser as they made their pass, but the damage rate was too high. I turned toward deep space hoping my hyper drive would be ready before my ships blew. Of course, the problem with running is that you're turning your engines toward the enemy. That's practically begging to have them blow out your engines. But what are you going to do? Only two ships made it to the retreat rally point.
After that bloody battle, we reached a kind of stalemate. He had heavy defenses near my worlds, and I had the same. Neither of us were willing to spare a fleet on a risky attack. His speed and short range punch were negated on offense by my defense platforms and long range missiles. I had to get in close to do damage to his planets. I solidified my defenses and went to work on improving my speed and marching the long slog to dreadnauts.
That plan worked with only one hiccup. He sent a couple of scouting fleets out (cruiser, destroyer). He was mapping worlds and looking for vulnerable colonies. He sent two out to somewhat vulnerable colonies. I was able to respond in time and destroy his ships. When two more appeared, I made the same preparations. Unfortunately I slacked in checking the intel. One was a scouting fleet. The other was a full assault force attacking a lightly defended early colony. Six cruisers come roaring in on my two. The planet's firing missiles, but they're so early the rate is pretty slow. Initially, I thought I might be able to hold out until the timer, but when the armored cruiser went, everything else disappeared rapid fire. I lost six ships, most of the infrastructure on the planet and three million colonists. He didn't even want the planet. He just didn't want me there.
Now the first Dreadnauts are rolling out with antimatter engines and warp drives. I'm working on a few special weapons to keep him on his toes (fins?). After that, I'm going to have to cut research way back to build the fleet I'll need. It's also time to seed the next wave of colonies. I hope I don't find my other neighbors too soon.
Jason
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2 May 06
I got engrossed in another Sword of the Stars game today. My Tarka were taking on the other three races in a spherical 150 star galaxy. Things started off well with some good size planets nearby to build up my industrial base. I had some decent starting tech and with a little genetic research, my colonies were growing quickly. You have to balance quick expansion with the development costs of a planet. The less suitable it is for your race, the greater the cost. If you expand too quickly, you can crush your economy with the costs. The down side to that is that research is reduced to a crawl.
You initially don't have the resources to send huge escorts with your colony ships. The problem with dealing with a true 3D star map is that you tend to grow spherically. If you remember your math, you'll know how fast the surface area of a sphere grows in relation to it's radius. That means you have more area to protect or leave vulnerable. So you either send out expensive escort fleets or just hope for the best.
I was going for balanced tech with a slight emphasis on industrial development. I also went heavily into energy weapons. First contact (other than random events) was with the Liir. The Liir don't have the strongest ships and the Tarka tend to be heavy on the fire power. The first few skirmishes went my way. I was hoping to push him back and encourage his expansion in another direction. I had just hit cruisers and had a slight tech edge. Most of his weapons were ballistic so I concentrated research on armor. I also made point defense a priority. If you want to take out populated worlds, you have to be prepared for their missile systems. Early on that means point defense. Soon my armored cruisers were cutting through swaths of Liir destroyers.
I stared pushing the Liir back. Then things changed. In short order Liir cruisers appeared, they switched from primarily ballistic to beam weapons, and they improved their point defense. Though my ships were still tougher, it went from easy victories regardless to only winning battles if I could keep the numbers close. The problem was the Liir were sending their forces out in larger fleets. That was still ok until they upgraded their engines. Suddenly they had longer range and were faster than me. Liir fleets began vectoring in behind the front lines. Even though I could see them coming as they slow down near gravity wells, it was getting harder and harder to beat them. Now I'm the one looking to expand away from the Liir while building up defenses to beat back their attacks.
Another problem is the Liir are so physically different. Many of the worlds I couldn't colonize because they were too inhospitable to the Tarka, are great for the Liir. If they grab those, they'll have forward operating bases in my territory. I can't afford to send fleets to guard hunks of rocks so I have to build a couple fleets of strip miners to suck the resources out of those worlds so they can't be used against me as effectively. I've just upgraded my drives and am working toward dreadnauts. Hopefully it will be enough to stop the Liir threat. Of course, the Humans and Hivers are out there, somewhere. I can only hope they're fighting each other. Back to the war.
Jason
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1 May 06
The game plan was to have a big Sword of the Stars media dump for you today. I was going to have the movies and the screenshots. I should have started with the screenshots. As it was I spent a large amount of time capturing, crashing, capturing, editing, trying to figure out how to add a screen bug. After all that I finally got a quality rendered version and realized I had butchered the sound. I'll be back at the drawing board tomorrow.
Before I launch onto another football draft related rant, I wanted to point out that the promised updated demo is out for Rise of Legends. You can grab it at the official site or the Usual Suspects. I must admit I was amazed at the bandwidth of the official site. YMMV.
I do have a couple of Sword of the Stars notes. Martin has publicly admitted that they were working on a demo. With an expected street date for the full game being around 1 Jun 06, look for the demo in the next few weeks. We might even host it here briefly for members. Martin has also hinted about plans for an expansion or expansion packs to Sword of the Stars. Usually sales dictate whether plans like that go ahead. Finally, Martin suggested I clarify what I meant about things that could be improved before release. It's easy when playing to forget that the great core gameplay didn't come about with a AAA title's budget. To borrow Martin's phrase, there's not a lot of extra chrome. The tutorial is fairly bare bones. Don't expect cut scenes to start scenarios or end games. The core gameplay is where they spent their time and effort. Since that's where gamers will spend most of their time, I'm not going to argue with them.
I hope my last football rant didn't scare too many people away. I think this one will be the last for a while. As I mentioned, I am over the frustration of the Texans first pick now. I think what happened (my theory anyway) is an interesting example of real world strategy.
Just a little history first. The Houston Oilers were loved by this city. The problem was Bud Adams. He was (and is) the owner of the team. Not long after the end of the Run and Shoot era and the biggest playoff choke in history, Bud started rumbling about a new stadium. The Astrodome was getting to be less of a great place to play, but Bud wanted a palace to play in. The city wasn't in great financial shape then and asked about scaled back plans. That's when the threats started about moving the team. The end result was the Tennessee Titans. There were a lot of hurt feelings before it was over.
Back to the draft. The city was caught up in the Vince Young vs. Reggie Bush debate. There was no real reason for the Texans to take Young. It would have created a mess in terms of salary and a quarterback controversy. He was the hometown hero though. It didn't help that the sports section of the paper kept the controversy alive by recommending Vince be drafted. I'm not sure if they were motivated by a desire to see the team improve or if they were interested in the great series of controversies that would follow (that would all help sell papers).
Bush on the other hand looked great. The Texans didn't desperately need a running back, but they did need a face for the team. Another high quality back would improve the team, but Bush was more than that. His mere presence on the field would change defenses. He was electrifying and would sell tickets and move merchandise. It was also an easy pick since all the pundits had him ranked as the best prospect in the draft.
I think the problems began with Bush. His agent was making noise about the best prospect of the last fifty years deserving top money even if not a quarterback. Then there was the problem of durability. Everyone was saying that 15-20 touches a game maximum would be all you could expect out of Bush. The Texans noticed with the National Championship on the line, Bush spend a chunk of the Rose Bowl on the sidelines. There were doubts growing when news of the Bush family house scandal started leaking out.
I think at that point the Texans wanted to trade down. They had an out. They could say they needed so much help on the team that even a great player wasn't worth the extra picks they could get. They would still have the ghost of Bush hanging over the franchise, but it wouldn't be so bad if they could get some offsetting talent. There was a bigger ghost hanging over the draft though. It was the ghost of Ricky Williams.
All the GM's remembered what New Orleans had given up for Williams in the draft. No one wanted to do that again. As near a sure thing as Bush was, no one wanted to pay value for the pick then pay the huge salary price tag for Bush. The Draft Value Chart gives you an idea of what a team would have had to give up to get that number one pick. The Jets might have been the only ones who could have made an acceptable offer, but when they didn't do if at pick two, it's clear they wouldn't have offered it at pick one. The Texans were starting to feel trapped.
Bush didn't seem interested in signing before the draft. After the selection, he could get the best contract possible. Who knows why they originally brought in Mario Williams. Perhaps it was to pressure Bush. Regardless, they loved what they saw. Plus he was young enough to only get bigger, stronger and better. And he wasn't interested in asking for the most money ever paid. Mario knew he could go one, but he could go two, three or four. One would be a great pay day without trying to squeeze out extra money. Then it seemed that every day something new and bad came out about that sports group and Bush's parents.
I think after talking to New Orleans, the Texans realized that the Saints would either get the deal Houston couldn't or they would get Bush if Houston passed. New Orleans could use the excitement generated by Bush even more than Houston. So when Coach Kubiak decided he could score points with the weapons and system he had on offense, but he needed help more to stop the likes of Peyton Manning and (probably) Vince Young, the decision wasn't as hard as it seemed.
The worst part, to me, was that if Bush had just come to the Texans with the intention of getting signed as the number one pick, he would have been. Given the difference in endorsement markets between Houston and New Orleans, he lost more money than he was arguing about in his contract. Amazing.
No matter how upset Texan fans were at the team, that was nothing compared to Bud Adams coming back to Houston dragging Vince Young back like some hunter's prize. It's fine if he wants to show off his number one pick in Nashville. Taunting us here just makes us remember how glad we are that we don't have to deal with him any more. Maybe, in time, Vince will set him straight.
Jason
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