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What future society shall we employ till eternity dictates otherwise?

Thought Control, 2+2 = Miriam Godwinson
- 18 (38.3%)
Cybernetic, robo-crusaders have arrived.
- 18 (38.3%)
Eudaimonia, welcome to pleasantville.
- 11 (23.4%)

Total Members Voted: 46


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Author Topic: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - The Dark Decades  (Read 22867 times)

Loud Whispers

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Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - The Dark Decades
« on: August 29, 2014, 07:47:44 am »

The year was 2014 when things on planet Earth went somewhat to shits. Every government and corporation unanimously decided that the world's problems were probably too hard to solve, so they did the next best thing and took humanity out of the problem by sending humankind into space towards a possible harbour of new life; Alpha Centauri.
With some deriding this decision as being a lazy way out unlikely to succeed, the assembled world leaders all assured their constituents that the utmost care and diligence would be put into ensuring that the UNITY project had a full diverse crew with every ethnicity represented and the world clapped in glorious applause as an international premier of "Ow my Balls: The talent show" began to air for the first time. There was also mention of Morgansoft and Joogle pooling in the last of their capital and assets into crafting a perfect ship that would get everyone to Alpha Centauri safely, but this was all mostly forgotten amidst a sea of optimism and covert hashtag wars.

The UNITY mission was destined for success with all the right specialists working together under Captain Garland to forge a new future, bright and peaceful; dauntless and inventive! An inspired humanity leaving behind the ills of the old world, ready to take on the new.

That is until Captain Garland was assassinated by an unknown assailant and everyone began carving up their own neat little enclaves of colony pods with their own selves at the helm - the new leaders of 7 factions each striving to put their idea of the future above all other visions.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
This is the map of the world.

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These are the regions each faction started in.
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The challenge here is that as you can see: Atlantis is entirely covered in monsoon jungles, rich in nutrients, freshwater and who knows what else. Farms in Atlantis will produce more food than anywhere else on Pangea; this is important because it means that the residents of Atlantis will have plenty of foods and so they will get busy having sex and having children - burgeoning their populations beyond competition. The Free Drones and the University of Planet are also both permanent pact brothers, (I tried to get both factions to surrender to one another to make them always share tech but I can't seem to get that to work properly for some reason) meaning they both more or less offset their respective weaknesses. The island of Atlantis itself is a defensive paragon of geography; it is distant from the struggles of Pangea allowing the University to pile ahead in research without probes stealing their work or interrupting his vital work. The factions on Pangea have no existing diplomatic ties and are much more likely to war amongst themselves than against the Atlantean island. It'll also start using the past tense as I've already got a century of gaming done just to make sure this game wouldn't end in premature destruction and kill the story before it's begun; sure enough the game's gotten interesting enough to warrant write ups and forum suggestions.
Oh, and I also gave the Free Drones and University 2x the starting units as any of the other factions, meaning Domai and Zhakarov both started with 4 colony pods and 2 scout units. This is just to further accelerate the head start the Atlanteans would have on the rest of the Pangean world.
There are two advantages the Believers have and one little commiseration eveyone has which is all right, namely that the Pangean heartland holds the Uranium flats which provide a modest bonus to energy reserves (it's not much, but it's something), I know the general map layout and Pangea is much larger than Atlantis - bigger has its benefits. Open to suggestions and ideas as well as names for new bases.

« Last Edit: November 18, 2014, 05:38:22 pm by Loud Whispers »
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - The Pangean struggle is real
« Reply #1 on: August 29, 2014, 07:49:09 am »

Lots of fluffy background, skip to the spoilers at the bottom if you can't be arsed to read it.
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__________________________________________________________________
Jump right into the LP with the tl;dr of the situation.
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Tl;dr of the tl;dr, what has science done?!


It is quite the pickle. On the bright side the Believers secured the weather paradigm, the planetary transit system and recently the ascetic virtues meaning at some point the Believers will surpass Atlantis in population. That's a mixed blessing to be sure, as an attempt to borg our way to victory is possible (hordes of thousands of angry crusaders vs thousands of angry communists and mad scientists anyone?) if uncertain.

In the end I reckon I might have to resort to planet busters and nerve gas, which is unfortunate as I do not want to use them until it's an absolute last resort. Does anyone know whether repealing the U.N. charter allows you to use planet busters without your lackeys declaring war on you, or will I have to remove them one by one before engaging in nuclear war?

Loud Whispers

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - The Pangean struggle is real
« Reply #2 on: August 29, 2014, 07:50:39 am »

Spoiler: POPULATION STATISTICS (click to show/hide)

Should I run any more stats on this? I'm tempted to see how much hassle a graph on units, base facility development or gross income would be.
Oh, and updates won't be quite nearly as large as the first 3 posts from here on out, covering a century of space history takes a lot of text; a decade or two, not so much.


I must admit it's been an eye opener for me making these graphs. Normally when I play I understood very well the effects of diplomacy on a base level, what will likely ruin your economy, piss off your neighbours or give you the edge and all that. But... Just look at the graphs on energy (the unit of currency in Alpha Centauri).
Spoiler: Net commerce energy (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Net total energy (click to show/hide)

« Last Edit: August 29, 2014, 01:12:51 pm by Loud Whispers »
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Patchy

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - The Pangean struggle is real
« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2014, 12:01:04 pm »

So very interesting. Definately watching now. Anyways the believers god did indeed want to give them a challenge hehe. I don't think I ever stacked the odds so much against myself like you have here. Though disallowing all victories but conquest does mean they have to come out and get you sometime, instead of peacefully winning it through transcendance. Pretty sure I wouldn't want to fight off singularity deathspheres with mid-game weaponry. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavers and I voted you bring the fight to them and go d-day on their island. It's crusade time again.

And the stats and graphs were definately cool, and did show just how much of a major boost that island is. Though most ac vets probably already had a good idea of it. Even weak ai's starting in or near the jungle can sometimes become juggernauts when their ai will usually lead them into the ground anywhere else... *cough* believers, *cough* sparta *cough weeze*
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - The Pangean struggle is real
« Reply #4 on: August 30, 2014, 08:37:50 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Chaplain Conrad moved with haste, floating his rover contingent up the river Barswept to the alarm of Daring Base. Fighting the wretched serfs of the Hive was one thing, but now the enemy wore the red of the drones; a far superior adversary to the Hive. As his battle chapel moved into position at the heart of the formation, Conrad wondered many things. He wondered if the drone soldiers missed their homes, so far away and after years of travelling - they were a world away from a world without God. He wondered if on that day he should die, would he be content with his life's worship? Then the first missiles began to sing from the mobile rovers Conrad merely wondered how many more soldiers would have to be driven into the sea before the drones saw fit to embrace the Lord's Grace and cease this devastating war.
-Excerpt from "The Rise of an Archangel," biography of Chaplain Conrad, 2173
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Feints and skirmishes testing the strength of the Spartan strongholds in the Alpine corridor and the eventual battles in the streets of supposedly neutral Morganite cities after half a century of war led the Spartans to believe at numerous times in history that a Believing invasions was imminent this day or the next, appropriately the bulk of their fearsome army was training and excersizing on the hills of Assassin's redoubt until the very end, placing the bulk of their forces away from the eventual fighting. Truly the war only began in earnest  when those first missile pods opened onto the Spartan garrison, paving the way for the Believers' landing.
-Professor Biren Diptanshu, the U.N.-censored history of Planet. Mission year 2174.


*With most of my bases having built tree farms/hybrid farms troop production started building up and the Empire fully committed to war, I sent my troops up North to fight the Spartans. Unknowingly the Spartans had been disregarding their treaty of friendship with the Morganites so I ran into quite a surprise as a bloody skirmish began with the Spartans in the Morganite lands. To my absolute shock the Spartans even shelled Morganite bases that contained Believing troops. Seeing the stiff resistance there and the large garrisons in the Spartan fortress cities and the growing aeroplane production lines an invasion on one of the Spartan peninsulas seemed obvious. Helicopters and needlejets cleared the way for a single rover to take Alpha Sector. The invasion continued in full force taking two more bases before northern reinforcements arrived, most importantly the arrival of several Spartan chaos interceptors which exacted a bloody price on the Believing air force. Worse still Believing interceptors were outmatched by the technologically superior Spartan air force who I had forgotten were the oldest air force on planet. Luckily I am fond of SAM ground units as standard (and a much better alternative to AAA escorts, I will attest to that), so the Spartan air force got a pyrrhic victory at best. In addition to the rather successful SAM missile rovers and SAM chaos rovers (chaos weapons provided courtesy of stolen Spartan datalinks) battle testing of cheap one shot SAM laser rovers is taking place, theory being that a SAM laser rover is very cheap so many clean versions can be made and should the opportunity arise any situation in which it gets an aircraft kill is a tactical victory regardless of whether it survives retaliation or not. University and Drone air superiority is absolute even with the Cloudbase academy at my behest (as my clashes with the Spartan air force have proven) so I shall have to entertain them with the lovely prospect of an expensive quantum shard needlejet being taken out by a humble laser rover. Or maybe chaos SAM units, but that's not nearly as heroic.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The Believing air campaign in the Titan's Arm is going a lot better than the Spartan one as the Hive has lost all anti-air capabilities, allowing Believing air forces to destroy all the farms/mines/forests and help Peacekeepers, Morganites and Believers on the ground get to all their destined targets. There is some worry in that every base that the Peacekeepers get makes them that much more powerful and they've already got an army of veterans and more planetary votes than anyone on the planet; but that's a worry for a worse future. I like Lal and so far Lal still likes me, all's splendid.
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The Drones and University launched a coordinated marine assault on the Peacekeeper coasts, Believing air forces arrived just in time to partake in the liberation of U.N. Pillar of Rights and fortunately intense drone riots in the occupied bases gave the Pangean forces enough time to crack open the invaders' defences before they got too stuck in with AAA garrisons. The plan is to eventually get some SAM units up in Lal's bases in addition to Needlejets and choppers, though considering how the only routes to his base of operations are through Yang or an underdeveloped wilderness that plan will have to wait.

Stats: Click on images for full size
Spoiler: Population (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Dosh (click to show/hide)

Polls are in; 2/3rds of all voters supported a normandy invasion of Atlantis instead of a defensive stance or using weapons of mass destruction. We have our goal; we will need many, many ships, and at the very least need to get quantum reactors as there is simply no way the Believing army will stand a chance if it's two reactors behind its adversary. It'll take time, but it's feasible. D-Day in God knows how many years.
New poll question, annihilate the Hive and/or Spartans or let them live as vassalized factions?
And the stats and graphs were definately cool, and did show just how much of a major boost that island is. Though most ac vets probably already had a good idea of it. Even weak ai's starting in or near the jungle can sometimes become juggernauts when their ai will usually lead them into the ground anywhere else... *cough* believers, *cough* sparta *cough weeze*
Thanks Patchy, and yeah the Monsoon jungles are fairly unreal. I can barely keep up with the University even with constant expansion going in just population alone; though out of interest now that you mention it Spartans don't tend to do well with the AI without lucky starts. It's that industry penalty I reckon, it makes the faction too unweildy for the AI. Same with the Believer's reliance on probe teams, the AI tends to use them awkwardly (the Morganites for example are currently eternally infiltrating my datalinks, essentially doing nothing with a dozen probe teams a turn). When all's gone and done I think I'm going to plop down various factions on Atlantis to see who does the best, or maybe run a MP game with everyone on Pangea rushing towards Atlantis.

Patchy

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - The Pangean struggle is real
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2014, 02:06:17 pm »

Well Sparta, I think it's mainly just their AI does not cope well with peacetime or isolation. If they have any sizeable period of time where they aren't fighting and getting military killed off, they are in trouble. Cause the ai will continuosly pump out more and more units instead of infrastructure to support them all. Can't count how many times I discovered a fairly isolated sparta faction and its economy was completely crushed under the weight of its own military. A military that was sitting around doing nothing but frying the occasional worm. The mineral production would be 1 or 2 at best in all their bases because of the support they'd be paying for dozens of impact rovers/squads. And yanno they might have been scary if impact weaponry weren't a hundred or so years out of date. The industry penalty just stacks on top of a bad situation and makes it worse, I'd hate to think how many turns they wasted building the last couple of rovers. The ai just does not know how to do a hybrid or builder styled sparta at all.

Believers aren't nearly as bad. I've seen them cope fairly well when isolated and on the rare occasions they are at peace with all their neighbors by cranking some formers out and getting to work, something Sparta is way too slow to do. The big problem with their ai is they have a bad tendency to overextend themselves on far too many battlefronts and they don't use their probe teams nearly enough to keep tech parity and thus fall way behind techwise. And thats a very bad thing to have happen when you are overextended on just 1 front, much more so when fighting on multiple fronts.

As for what factions do best on atlantis, would be hard to say. I'd think a builder type faction, but then again I've seen some of the warmonger factions manage to settle their heartland in the jungle and turn into some of biggest and most fun juggernauts to fight. Though I find myself curious to how much better the uni or drones would be doing if they didn't have to share atlantis with each other.

I'm looking at the minimap at atlantis and remembered something I noted years ago. Is that the ai will borg heavily in the jungle even if the ai in question is normally, fairly adverse to it. The extra borging they normally would not do contributes greatly to the jungles ability to produce juggernauts. It's one of the reasons I think the Hive's ai which borgs normally does so much better than Sparta which doesn't borg much normally.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - The Pangean struggle is real
« Reply #6 on: September 01, 2014, 12:17:19 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Some talk of Santiago,
And some of Zhakarov
Of Domai and Sheng-Ji Yang,
And such great foes as these.
But of all the world's great heroes,
There's none that can compare
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row,
To the Lord's own Infantry.
-The Lord's Believers, war march.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Miriam Godwinson is still the planetary governer by popular vote.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Through the thundering shards and the physics warping chaos fire, you could hear the shouting of wounded soldiers or bold attackers, storming and laughing at death as the judging eyes of God looked down on us. The remains of the previous Believing convoy were still strewn over the broken road of the ambush site, so, leveling our cannons we drove headfast into the ranks of University soldiers.
-Chaplain Conrad, Mission debrief 2179.


*That Morganite ship was being blockaded from exiting by a Free Drone fleet. It was destroyed in plain view of the Believing coast, which must have been a distressing sight to see for the inhabitants of Capital Cathedral.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Tens of thousands of moving masses, disciplined soldiers ranks behind ranks stretched as far as the eyes could see appeared on all of the needlejet's augurs.
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Subsequent attack runs confirmed the news; the Spartans had mobilized everything south in their defence of New Laconia, leaving the northern approaches free for the taking.
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The University nearly seized the Manifold Nexus in a 3 year battle at Deep Passages where an armoured former unit, an AAA garrison and a rush built SAM Chaos unit held off shard invaders long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Subsequent aerial runs have not yet successfully dislodged University soldiers further along the unsettled coasts, some with advanced probability sheath armour. The University and Free Drones have both prototyped advanced weaponry, Quantum Lasers (16) and Fusion Lasers (10) which render all Pangean defences obsolete and completely outclasses all Believing interceptors.
Also in other news, tensions with the Morganites have increased as the pact was cancelled after the Morganites stole research off of the Believers. Probe teams are being built in all surrounding bases and soldiers put on alert.

Spoiler: Population (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Economy (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Replies (click to show/hide)
Current course of action: Subjugate the Spartans, expand and reinforce the coasts in anticipation for when University air forces finally have the range to attack Pangea in addition to stopping University marine landings. Subjugation of the Peacekeepers and the Morganites will likely have to follow in order for Pangea to provide a unified front against Atlantis, the risk of any more betrayals and collaboration with Atlanteans is too great. 81% of voters also supported vassalization, so there's that.
*EDIT
Fixed a mistype.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2014, 02:14:11 pm by Loud Whispers »
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Patchy

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - D-Day Atlantis 100 Years
« Reply #7 on: September 01, 2014, 02:13:23 pm »

Quote
The idea here is that with the two factions on it there are no immediately exploitable weaknesses on Atlantis, though considering just how many troops the University are fielding despite the Drones' thing being industry I reckon a Consciousness-University would have been better.

As you noted, the uni is still fielding an impressive number of units. The drones I think don't really cover a major weakness of the uni, as it isn't weak in industry, though the uni isn't strong in it either. The sheer tech advantage, borging, and massive population is filling in for the lower intrinsic industrial advantage of the uni vs drones quite handily.

Quote
Hive is a good contender for best Atlantean candidate faction. Innate pop growth bonus, good industry and already good borger. Attacking a Hive Atlantis would be brilliant fun...

Hehe, so a Hivelantis as your next challenge? Perhaps you should give them the Consciousness or Morganites as backup, or let them go it solo. Dunno, up to you on that.

Quote
The Believers have an abundance of mind worms because the governers insist and sometimes I do not manage to stop them before they go ahead and build them anyways. I don't know why the Peacekeepers have many of them.

Your governors might actually be on to something. Worms can actually level the tech playing field when utilised in large numbers. And since you are the believers you do tend to have higher morale bonuses over the uni and drones. I think supplementing your naval invasion force with IoDs and LoCs could be a nice tactical weapon for your arsenal. You'll still need plenty of marines to create beachheads for the standard mind worm unit, but once on the ground they could potentially cause problems for the atlanteans as well. You could possibly shift to green economy later on to leverage some more power out of them.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - D-Day Atlantis 100 Years
« Reply #8 on: September 04, 2014, 01:48:05 pm »

The Morganite war ended after just three years of fighting. Needlejets, mindworms, probe teams and shocktroopers spilled over the hills of Pangea taking every base that mattered. The Morganites had one last turn to attain some small measure of victory from defeat and their probe teams extracted every last file they could from our bases in that last year. Something also quite surprised me after I had wiped out the garrisons of two Morganite bases:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Descending from space itself, University drop troopers fronted by an elite prototype unit fielding neutronium armour and quantum lasers took one of the Morganite bases I had cleared. The prototype unit managed to down a chaos needlejet in spite of it not having any actual specialist AAA capabilities and soon these technologies will become commonplace. This is further delaying the date for a normandy landing, good news is that we have also begun prototyping fusion lasers so we are not yet rendered obsolete. The sheer speed at which the University is developing and employing advanced weapons is too fast for the Believers to keep up with though for sure, now the University have the network backbone and are getting a new technology every 1/2 turns and are already 3/4s the way through every technology in the tech tree. All of the Believing lands are safe from orbital drops because of their defences, most of the Pangean bases likewise are protected. The Spartans however are currently being attacked by orbital drop soldiers in great quantity as most new bases they construct are vulnerable until air defences are built.
The largest marine assault has also taken place on the East coast by over 13 University shocktroopers and 4 Drone soldiers. The University are beginning to put their cruiser transports to use it seems. Air strikes have been called on their positions but they still keep advancing, so it'll be interesting to see if I can make my coastal wall of bases in peace.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Peace is now ensured between all nations on Pangea by Pax Miriam, the Peacekeepers warhawkish tendencies held in check by our diplomacy. The Morganites are fractured as a faction, more akin to a union of independent city states than a cohesive unit. The Hive, reduced to a puppet police state carry out their society with the sole purpose of making any Peacekeeper betrayal pay, watching their Western borders more cautiously than their Eastern. The Spartans other than losing their southern peninsulas have fared rather well, keeping hold of their industrial heartlands in surrender. The Believers themselves have constructed a vast Empire running efficient green economic policies, have a full democracy allowing for people to elect their governers for important base decisions and full access to untold amounts of psch, recreational and vital facilities (like healthcare and food stores). The only downside I can think of living in Believer land is that 70% of all citizens are loyal clones bred to support the war effort against the Atlantean scum, but aforementioned clones are all physically fit so it's probably not all that bad either. I'm sure for the few who show outstanding valour, to have their genes used to create thousands of clones must be an exemplary honour!

Spoiler: Responses (click to show/hide)

Patchy

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - D-Day Atlantis 100 Years
« Reply #9 on: September 05, 2014, 05:00:08 pm »

Well the situation is looking dire enough with the uni advancing so rapidly up the tech tree now. Guess I'll authorise victory by any means neccessary, even if that means PB's. Though I honestly don't know if submissive factions will declare vendetta on you for dropping one of those, you might just have to put all the rival leaders of pangeae into punishment spheres for the greater good. I've never really used the atrocity options in a serious game (at least against other ai human factions), only in ones I was faffing about with various game mechanics. That and I will mercilessly nerve gas the alien factions without a second thought.

I haven't really played this since 01 02ish I think, and I am really considering reinstalling. But this game is like crack and don't know if I want to let it suck away so many hours again lol.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - D-Day Atlantis 100 Years
« Reply #10 on: September 05, 2014, 06:12:26 pm »

Subfactions will declare war on you for using PBs. Realistically before employing PBs all other factions on Pangea would have to be eliminated to stop the Jeruasalem heartlands be destroyed by a planet buster. Chemical weapons and all that jazz are fine though.
That and I will mercilessly nerve gas the alien factions without a second thought.
Honestly, fuck the alien factions. You leave them alone for 10 seconds and they've spread like roaches across the map.

I haven't really played this since 01 02ish I think, and I am really considering reinstalling. But this game is like crack and don't know if I want to let it suck away so many hours again lol.
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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - D-Day Atlantis 100 Years
« Reply #11 on: September 06, 2014, 09:54:00 am »

Reading this makes me want to start playing again. DAMMIT!
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - D-Day Atlantis 100 Years
« Reply #12 on: September 07, 2014, 09:01:16 am »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
CIO Paul Ardent checked the Aerospace node in real time; J2-Seraphim Bomber squadron 14 on an attack vector to 88-66, great victory imminent. Attack vector sanctioned, Zhakarov unrepentant. Projected University casualties: Absolute annihilation of advanced armoured destroyer transport, entire advanced UNIV Marine brigade.
-The sinking of the U.N.S. Discovery

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Subsequent scouting runs of colony expedition Easter revealed the source of the sudden silence, strewn about all over the shores were the mangled remains of civilian machinery intended to keep the colonists safe in the hostile environment. All that remained were the University hovertanks which retreated into the rocky hills on sight of the Believing needlejets, now trapped by the destruction of their naval escape they would soon be forced to face justice.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Soil enrichers allow us to extend the Malthusian limits of our people's dominion, many more thousands can live off of the same lands together as fusion power gives us the tools to not only fertilize our fields, but to truly make it wealthy in nitrates, phosphates and potassium. With the addition of a mere 50 more former units and spurned on by our careful engineering, we will not create the most extensive and advanced agronomy on Planet, we will create Eden.
-Chief Agronomist Diana Ardent, cost-benefit analysis, mission year 2200.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The University bases are a day's wait from one another with Planet's first implemented high-speed monopole railways, still forcing Believing formers to play catch up with their advanced infrastructure. Useful for commute between research facilities and time-pressured scientists, the monopole rails also allow for the rapid redeployment of University and Drone soldiers between harried bases in the event of a Believing landing.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The Believing defence of Pangea on the Eastern front took a turn for the absolutely successful as Miriam's air force resorted to suicidal attack runs past University destroyer escorts and past their return limits, diving their jets straight into transports full of elite marine soldiers and hovertanks before crashing into the freshwater ocean as martyrs.

Spoiler: Population (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Economy (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Responses (click to show/hide)

andrea

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - D-Day Atlantis 100 Years
« Reply #13 on: September 07, 2014, 10:38:25 am »

Personally, I would consider sinking atlantis below sea level with missiles. A coordinated strike can get most of the island in one turn, if you can dominate the sea. Then you worry about your allies.

Have you considered voting in the planetary council to lower sea level? I don't know if there is any limit, but eliminating the sea would work well at eliminating naval superiority. And perhaps the free drone infantry swarm will spread itself by attacking, rather than defending the (former)island with overwhelming force.

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Re: Let's play SM Alpha Centauri - D-Day Atlantis 100 Years
« Reply #14 on: September 07, 2014, 11:26:39 am »

Personally, I would consider sinking atlantis below sea level with missiles. A coordinated strike can get most of the island in one turn, if you can dominate the sea. Then you worry about your allies.
It's up there in the list of possible actions. It'd be the one that'd take the most planning by far, mostly due to possible blowback from allies, but Atlantis is honestly so well defended, developed and clustered that planet busters could actually be cost effective if used en masse. Final straw option.

Have you considered voting in the planetary council to lower sea level? I don't know if there is any limit, but eliminating the sea would work well at eliminating naval superiority. And perhaps the free drone infantry swarm will spread itself by attacking, rather than defending the (former)island with overwhelming force.
I'd have to lower the sea level successfully about 9 times before the sea was gone, which would take quite some time. It's a very deep sea. It would also turn Pangea into one giant rock, and I am quite fond of the river-run aesthetic myself (which does also give coastal cities the benefit of that vast bounty of food).
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