Join 482

Here you will find a report on how the Lively Clones of Maurits or Lost Colonies of Man together with the Klingon Empire became the winners of game join482. That was the rather unimaginative name of a game at www.planetsserver.com. It was a Phost game, with explore map, wrap around map, wormholes and with shiplist Tlist 1.1. That is basically the same as the usual shiplist, but with a few ships made more useful. Most important for the Colonies was that the Scorpius Carrier was actually worth building, with a mass of 315 KT, 6 beams and 5 bays.

The first four turns I build two Cobols, a Large Freighter and again a Cobol. The Cobol is such a wonderful ship with it's fuel ram scoop. Your neutronium worries are almost over when you have lots of these flying around. I basically just sent those ships out to explore, with the two Warp 9 Medium Freighters from the beginning as well.

In turn six I had my First Contact: a Firecloud at about 300 lightyears northeast of my homeworld. I then decided to build a warp 1 Gemini to build fighters and after that a Patriot to be more able to deal with a threat like that. In turn eight I discovered a wormhole, where apparently the Firecloud came through.

The next turn I got a sensor sweep of a Crystalline planet. The turn after that, the Crystallines got a new leader, who actually submitted turns. As this was far to my south and I only had a Cobol in the neighbourhood, I offered him a temporary non-agression treaty, which was accepted.

In turn twelve I managed to build my second starbase at a Siliconoid planet. At the same time, one of my Cobols had a run-in with the Firecloud. This proved to be a formidable opponent, as he had Heavy Blasters and Mark 8 torpedo tubes and I only had Plasma Bolts and Mark 4s. In theory I would probably have lost. In practice the Firecloud had no torps...
Turn fifteen presented a Biocide near the wormhole I had previously discovered. I had a Scorpius in the neighbourhood, which as said was a lot better than the standard Scorpius, but still of course no match for a Biocide. Immediately a Virgo was ordered from the construction yard and was fitted out with 240 fighters. Four turns later, the Biocide proved it's worth against a small planet: it had Heavy Blasters and 140 fighters, which seemed pretty much this early in the game, unless he had help from another cheap fighter building race. My Virgo was very near to him, but I didn't want to do battle just then, as I was sure to lose. I managed to get another Virgo out and together they attacked in turn 25. As expected I lost one Virgo and the Borg lost their Biocide. I was once again master in my own backyard.

Meanwhile, I had sent a Scorpius and a Cobol through the wormhole, to see what was on the other side. They saw some Borg, Lizard and Empire ships. With these ships in a few turns I saw two Biocides heading towards the wormhole, without them appearing on my end. The characteristics of the wormhole basically meant that ships travelling through it had a chance of 10 percent of getting damaged and 5 percent of getting killed. This may have happened to the two Biocides, which would mean that I was very lucky. I myself didn't lose any ships by that wormhole, though I sent about fifteen ships through it.

On my south-western border I stumbled upon a Klingon planet in turn 19. Not wanting to fight him while I was busy with the Borg, I contacted him and made peace. Soon that became an alliance, as we both saw the benefits of working together. He was involved in battling the Crystallines. In turn 24 we both got a starbase in each others territory. My base was used for a Gemini and then Cobols and Virgos. His base was used for Glory Devices and Cloakers (D7) and one Victorious.

Around turn thirty I had conquered some Privateer planets in the east. They stopped playing shortly after that, which eventually got me an MBR, which I happily cloned. I also saw the Birds at both my Western and Eastern borders and made a peace agreement with them.
Since turn 19 I had a nice starbase in my South, heading towards the Crystallines. It was a Bovinoid monarchy with eventually 14.5 million natives. I towed a Merlin there from my homeworld and it happily turned supplies into Virgoes. My non-agression agreement with the Crystallines was about to end in turn 30 and my ally was already at war with them, so I build a fleet to assist. In turn 28 I sent away two Cobols, two Virgoes and a Scorpius. The two Virgoes had Heavy Phasers, which would come in handy against the webs of the Crystallines.
In turn 31 a Cobol and a Virgo started assisting in the Klingon attack from the west. The Crystallines by then understood that there would be no renewal of the non-agression treaty, so they started webbing some more. Then my fleet was sent in from his north across the now ex-border. They were joined by another Cobol, so three Cobols were towing the carriers, which were sweeping the webs. Cobols are extremely valuable when attacking the Crystallines. They can carry enough supplies so they can repair themselves from a webmine hit. And when they get hit, they lose some fuel, but after that they make fuel by their ram scoop. So you are never out of fuel, which is very reassuring. But I had enough fuel with me anyway.

I split my fleet up a bit to take care of different web fields. I knew there was a large chance of hitting a webmine, causing the fleet to be broken up, so I decided to break it up myself, heading toward different webfields so they could all be swept away by the Heavy Phasers. In turn 33 the ship limit was reached and the next turn my Scorpius took over the Crystalline base Portsmouth. My fleet was gathered at that planet, which was 72 lightyears north of the Crystalline homeworld. I decided to fly in a Large Freighter with a Cobol and the necessary extra ingredients to establish a base there, which was done two turns later. By that time the Crystalline player gave up and stopped playing, realizing he had no chance anymore against the combined powers of the Colonials and the Klingons.

It took me three turns to work my way through the webmines to the Crystalline homeworld. I got there with two Cobols, the Scorpius and one of the Virgoes. The Virgo first attacked and destroyed the base and then a Crystal Thunder. More battles followed the same turn and the end result was that I had lost my two carriers, had destroyed three Crystal Thunders and a Merlin and owned the planet, with some Crystalline ships and my two Cobols peacefully in orbit. Apparently they had no Kill mission or primary enemy setting. With the Crystallines out of the game all that was left to do in that region was slowly mopping up all web fields and the last resistance.

At the same time that we were attacking the Crystallines, I had entered the wormhole to the Borg with a Cobol, a D7 and two Virgoes, assisting the Cobol and Scorpius that were already there. They were soon joined by four other ships. The D7 managed to tow a Biocide to the fleet. It was no match, as it had no fighters at all. Three turns after that (turn 36) the Borg homebase was taken down and after that the real fighting was over. In turn 40 the Klingons and I claimed victory.

Game info: http://www.planetsserver.com/planets/gameInfo.do?game=join482