Glory to the machines! (Empire Builder) Thread 2

[The Froggy Ninja]

DAMN YOU CRIT FAIL!

 

[Isaacssv558]

DAMN YOU CRIT FAIL!

Click to shrink...

You were actually really lucky on that, a Nat 2 causes a support action to give a penalty to the roll of the primary action but a Nat 1 would have caused an automatic failure, potentially a critical one, of the supported action (Unless it was itself a Nat 100). Since the main action had a relatively low DC this wasn't a huge issue.

 

[The Froggy Ninja]

I was referring to the nat zero.

 

[Isaacssv558]

I was referring to the nat zero.

Click to shrink...

You can't get nat 0s, a 0 is the result of 1-5 on a 1d100. A nat 1 is actually counted as a result of -1 but I can't get the roller to represent that properly. A nat 2-5 is a complete failure, a nat 1 is a spectacular failure. You had 2 nat 2-5s but they were in some of the least important rolls, the worst they caused was preventing your chance of reaching level 2 (You still got Lvl 1 and some progress towards 2.) of MilOrg and damaging some monitoring posts.

 

[Ginger Maniac]

Yeah, they're honestly not too important at this point. Monitoring post repair or replacement is an Espionage action, and we don't have an awful lot else to do with those just yet. We haven't started fighting people either, so Operations actions aren't exactly at a premium too.

 

[Isaacssv558]

I've finished drafting the results of everything but the economic actions, which I'm still slightly torn over. I think I'm going to slightly change the way I calculate them.

 

[We Just Write]

Another valid espionage action is the construction of long-range space telescopes. You might just discover something interesting.

 

[Isaacssv558]

You did really well on your Mantle Extractor rolls.

Also, I support the idea of your building long-range telescopes. It gives me a way to introduce stuff before it show up on your doorstep. Although I'll have to roll a d100 to see whether you're pointing them in the right directions.

 

[We Just Write]

You did really well on your Mantle Extractor rolls.

Also, I support the idea of your building long-range telescopes. It gives me a way to introduce stuff before it show up on your doorstep. Although I'll have to roll a d100 to see whether you're pointing them in the right directions.

Click to shrink...

Not to mention that you'll have to account for light lag.

 

[Ginger Maniac]

Long-range telescopes as distinct from the interferometry array in the plan, yes?

I suppose when we're not using them to roll a save against random events, we can start making observations of nearby stars. See if there's anything astronomically interesting out there.

 

[Isaacssv558]

Not to mention that you'll have to account for light lag.

Click to shrink...

Exactly If you roll badly you might mess up on accounting for light lag.

 

[Isaacssv558]

You've unlocked a new Mechanic by completing both Warp Drive and the Space Elevator. It's not so much a bonus as an easier way of managing assets as a soon-to-be multi-system polity.

 

[Isaacssv558]

All calculations and such are finally finished, I just need to do the write up now. It'll probably be done sometime tomorrow. The changes I've made streamline things significantly so we'll be able to continue into multi-system planning without too much of an issue. If we get above a dozen or so systems I may need to consider additional tweaking but the updated system should work for the next 10 turns at the very least.

 

[Isaacssv558]

Turn 1 Results

Greetings Leader, the periodic status report is ready. Our R&D has been particularly successful, with only a single project failing to reach completion. The project to develop improved heatsinks had a great start but soon ran into a road-block in the form of a lack of theoretical knowledge in the area of thermodynamics.

The Warp Drive research was particularly successful, not only have we managed to make a production model of the prototype {Alcubierre} Drive, we have developed a number of efficiency increasing improvements using unconventional geometries and oscillations of the Warp Effect.
We met with considerable success in our antimatter research. Not only have we achieved a much improved understanding of the theoretical functioning of antimatter, we have made a major breakthrough in it's production, increasing output by a factor of 4.

Our chemical research also met with great success, leading to great progress in the field of Material Science as a whole. While our drone control research wasn't as successful the project was still completed, we now have a complete theoretical understanding of our use of drones.

Our Industrial and Economic programs had more mixed results but were nonetheless very successful overall. Our attempts to improve transportation in the colonies hit a dead-end due to the lack of colonized territory to transport things to. The colonial economic programs, on the other hand, were quite successful, expanding both resource mining and citizen production.

The programs in our Capital were much less of mixed bag, with both the global communications system and the Space Elevator reaching completion. We have significantly expanded resource production, with 3 new Mantle Extractors coming online alongside our first X/AMAT factories. There was a brief problem when we ran out of XCarb for the mantle extractors but it was solved when large shipments were brought in from the colonies. Unfortunately, our lack of an established trade system made this extremely inefficient.

With the completion of the Space Elevator we have successfully developed both orbital manufacturing and a more efficient system of colonial management. Soon we will be prepared to begin building the first of the ships that will act as the instrument of our revenge against the {Monsters}.

Our Espionage program was a complete failure. We finished 5 colonial monitoring posts only to damage the 5 already constructed. Then, while the IIS (Insignificant Intelligence Service) was occupied dealing with the fallout from that, someone miscalculated the amount of propellant needed to get the interferometry array into orbit by 3 orders of magnitude and completely destroyed the Medium Spaceport.

Our expansion went fairly well. The expansion of our colonies continued apace, with 4 new cities built. In addition, we successfully colonized our homeworld's moon, building 13 Lunar cities. Our project to develop specialized combat techniques in the colonies was at best a limited success but we've finally finished establishing a chain of command.

Spoiler: Sith

• Expansion
• -- Continue colony development.
  • +1.5 new city
  • -9 RSO, -3 XCarb
• Research
• -- Astrophysics.
  • Astrophysics Lvl 2 Unlocked
  • 50 Progress to Astrophysics Lvl 3.
• Development
• -- Heat Sinks
  • 100 Progress to Lvl 3 Heat Sinks.
• Industry
• -- Improve global transport network.
  • No Progress
• Economics
• -- Construct additional resource extractors.
  • +3 RSO Mine, -12 RSO
• Espionage
• -- Expand monitoring posts to cover the planet's entire orbit.
  • -5 Monitoring Posts
• Operations
  • -- Consider the tactical and mechanical effects of fighting near a star or other highly-radiative body, and draw up a doctrine for doing so.
  • Complete success, XX Progress towards MilOrg.

Spoiler: Darth

• Expansion
  • -- Begin lunar colonization.
    • +6 Lunar Cities.
    • -24 RSO
  • -- Support above action.
    • +7 Lunar Cities
    • -28 RSO
• Research
  • -- Continue drone control research.
    • Lvl 3 Drone Control Theory Unlocked.
  • -- Nanotechnology.
    • Lvl 2 Nanotech unlocked
  • -- Gravitational Physics.
    • Lvl 3 Gravitational Physics Unlocked.
  • -- Antimatter.
    • Lvl 4 Antimatter Physics Unlocked.
  • -- Chemistry.
    • Lvl 2 Chemistry Unlocked, Lvl 2 GenMatSci Unlocked.
• Development
  • -- Warp Drive.
  • -- Support above action. +15
    • Warp Drive Lvl 2 Unlocked.
  • -- Design orbital shipyard facilities for vessels of all shapes and sizes.
    • Lvl 1 Orbital Shipyard Unlocked.
  • -- Improve Exotic Carbon Armour.
    • Lvl 2 Exotic Carbon Armour Unlocked.
  • -- Improve Antimatter Production.
    • Lvl 3 Antimatter Production Unlocked.
• Industry
  • -- Improve global communications.
    • -10 RSO, -2 XCarb
  • -- Finish space elevator.
    • Elevator Finished.
    • -2160 XCarb
• Economics
  • -- Antimatter factories.
    • +9 AMAT Fact, -90 RSO, -9 XCarb
  • -- Exotic Matter factories.
    • +14 XMAT Fact
    • -140 RSO, -14 XCarb
  • -- Mantle Extractor.
    • +2 Mantle Extractors.
    • -90 RSO, -360 XCarb
  • -- Support above action.
    • +1 Mantle Extractor.
    • -45 RSO, -180 XCarb
    • -113 RSO for transport of XCarb from colonies.
• Espionage
  • -- Set up an orbital interferometry array that can be trained on incoming starships to gather information on them.
    • -1 Medium Spaceport
• Operations
  • -- Invent a new chain of command optimized from the ground up for Carmote. Take cues from the old Rektian leadership structure where appropriate or thematic, but do not treat it as dogma.
  • -- Support above action.
    • Lvl 1 Military Organization Unlocked

Spoiler: Vanmote Belt

• Expansion
• -- Continue colony development.
  • +2.5 Asteroid Habitats, +3,000 Colonists from Darth.
  • -15 RSO, -5 XCarb
• Research
• -- Continue investigating electromagnetism and shields.
  • Lvl 3 Electrodynamics developed.
• Development
• -- Develop better maneuvering thrusters.
  • Lvl 2 Maneuvering Thrusters Unlocked
  • +50 Progress towards Lvl 3 Maneuvering Thrusters
• Industry
• -- Continue improvement of transport network.
  • No Progress.
• Economics
• -- Construct additional Citizen Factories.
  • +2 Citizen Factories
  • -2 RSO
  • -2 XCarb
• Espionage
• -- Finish setting up monitoring network.
  • -5 RSO
  • +5 Monitoring Posts
• Operations
• -- Consider the tactical and mechanical effects of fighting in a debris-rich environment, and draw up a doctrine for doing so.
  • Failure, no penalty or progress.

Updated state-of-the-nation will be posted as soon as I finish converting it to bbcode.

 

[Isaacssv558]

Spoiler: Current Territory

Renarth System

• Sith: 4% controlled (MOON not controlled)
• Darth: 100% controlled
  • Moon: 100% controlled.
• 3: 0% controlled
• 4: 0% controlled
• Vanmote Belt (dense): 5% controlled
• 6: 0% controlled
• 7: 0% controlled
• Ast. Field 2: 0% controlled
• 9: 0% controlled
• 10: 0% controlled
• 11: 0% controlled
• 12: 0% controlled

Spoiler: Current Resources

Renarth System

• Colonies
  • RSO: 96
  • FIS: 10
  • XCarb: 56
• Capital: Darth
  • RSO: 1446
  • FIS: 261
  • XCarb: 0

Spoiler: Current Assets

Renarth System

• EWD satellites: 1300
• Colonies
  • Population: 14,150
    • Sith
      • Cities (4)
    • Vanmote Belt
      • Asteroid Habitats (5)
  • Resource Extraction
    • Excellent Mines (5)(out: 5 RSO)[25]
    • XCarb Refineries (4)(out: 36 XCarb)[144]
    • Asteroid Mines (2)(out: 4 RSO)[8]
    • Exceptional Asteroid Mines (7)(out: 6 RSO)[42]
  • Infrastructure
    • Excellent Global Communications Networks (Level 2)
    • Small Spaceport (1)(operating costs of 1 RSO per unit)
  • Industry
    • Citizen Factories (2)(in: 1 RSO, 15 XCarb | out: 1,500 Carmote)[2, 30 | 3000]
  • Surveillance
    • Monitoring Posts (5)
• Capital: Darth
  • Population: 169,369
    • Vault Complexes (35)[350]
    • Moon
      • Lunar Cities (13)
  • Resource Extraction
    • Mantle Extractor (5)(out: 500 RSO, 50 FIS)[2500, 250]
    • XCarb Refineries (61)(out: 36 XCarb)[2196]
    • Antimatter Factories (9)(in: 1 RSO | out: 12 AMAT)[9 | 108]
    • Antimatter Factories (14)(in: 1 RSO | out: 4 XMAT)[14 | 56]
  • Infrastructure
    • Excellent Global Communications Network (Level 2)
    • Excellent Global Transport Network (Level 2)
  • Industry
    • Citizen Factories (34)(in: 1 RSO, 15 XCarb | out: 1,500 Carmote)[34, 510 | 51000]
    • Advanced EWD Satellite Factory (1)(in: 6 XCarb, 9.6 RSO | out: 400 EWD Satellites)
  • Orbital
    • Space Elevator (36 Cables)

Spoiler: Actions

Renarth System

• Colonies
  • Expansion (+10 bonus)(2 slots available)
  • Industry (+10 bonus)(2 slots available)
  • Economics (+10 bonus)(2 slots available)
  • Sith
    • +1 Expansion Action
    • +1 Industry Action
    • +1 Economics Action
  • Vanmote Belt
    • +1 Expansion Action
    • +1 Industry Action
    • +1 Economics Action
• Capital: Darth
  • Expansion (+10 bonus)(2 slots available)
  • Diplomacy (LOCKED)
  • Research (+25 bonus)(5 slots available)
  • Development (+25 bonus)(5 slots available)
  • Industry (+10 bonus)(2+1 slots available)
  • Economics (+20 bonus)(4 slots available)
  • Espionage (+5 bonus)(1 slot available)
  • Operations (+10 bonus)(2 slots available)
  • Moon
    • +1 Industry Action

Action Bonus of Settlement:
Capital: Max Racial Actions in accordance with Development.
Colonies: +3 Actions when Undeveloped, additional +7 when Developed.
Outposts: +1 Actions.

Any one colonial planet cannot give more actions of a category than allowed by the base set of racial actions. This includes actions from orbiting outposts. This means you can't get 50 colonial actions from a Gas Giant with 40 moons. (In all likelihood some/all of the moons would be used for the colony itself anyway.)

Each city benefits from up to 1,000 Carmote. It can hold additional mainframes but putting more than 1k in a city just means each one uses fewer drones. (The mainframes themselves don't take up that much space.) Vault Complexes count as 10 Cities and are resistant to bombardment but cost significantly (15 or 20 times) more.

Population Needed for Development:
Capital: 1M Carmote + 1000 Cities (This is lowered to 10k/10 Cities on Darth.)
Colonies: 100k Carmote + 100 Cities
Outposts: 10k Carmote + 10 Cities

Spoiler: Technology

• Organization
  • Industrial Organization: Level 1
  • Economic Organization: Level 1
  • R&D Organization: Level 1
  • Military Organization: Level 1.25 (Beginnings of environment adaptive tactics.)
  • Interplanetary Organization: Level 1
  • Interstellar Organization: Level 0
  • Diplomacy: Level 0.25 (No actual experience+depression+HATE?.)
• Applied
  • Weapons
    • Railgun: Level 1
    • Plasma Cannon: Level 0
    • Laser: Level 1
    • Conventional Missiles: Level 1
    • Nuclear Missiles: Level 1
    • Particle Beams: Level 3
  • Defenses
    • Standard Starship Armour: Level 2
    • Exotic Carbon Starship Armour: Level 2
    • Ion Shield: Level 1 (This only protects against background radiation)
    • Plasma Shield: Level 1
  • Infrastructure
    • Resource Extraction
      • Mantle Extractor: Level 1, 20 Successes needed. Cap to 10Lvl per planet.
      • Basic Resource Extraction: Level 1
    • Industry
      • AMAT Production: Level 3 (x2 per level above 1)
      • XMAT Production: Level 2 (x2 per level above 1)
      • Citizen Production: Level 1
      • XCarb Refinement: Level 1
      • Recycling: Level 2 (FIS and RSO)
      • Manufacturing Precision: Level 2
      • Manufacturing Throughput: Level 2
      • Manufacturing Efficiency: Level 1
    • Orbital
      • Spaceports: Level 1
      • Orbital Elevator: Level 2
      • Orbital Shipyard: Level 1
    • Colonization
      • Asteroid Colonization Specialty: Level 1
      • Thermal Hardening: Level 1
      • Colonization: Level 1
    • MISC
      • Superconductors: Level 2
      • Fission Power: Level 1
      • Fusion Power: Level 2
      • XMAT Containment: Level 3
      • AMAT Containment: Level 2
    • Basic (Cities, Transportation, Communications, etc.)
      • Vault Complexes: Level 1
      • Transportation: Level 2
      • Communication: Level 2
      • Quantum Entanglement Communication: Level 1
    • Special: Racial (Note: This is the tech level of your species' mainframes.)
      • Hardware Based AI: Level 3
      • Research AI: Level 2
      • Drone Control: Level 3
  • Ships
    • Hulls
      • Satellites: Level 2
      • Starships (100m-2km): Level 2
      • Large Starships (2-4km): Level 1
      • Massive Starships (4km+): Level 0
      • Combat Starships: Level 2
      • Carmote Starship Integration: Level 2
      • Colony Ships: Level 1
    • Heatsinks: Level 2 (120 Progress)
    • Heat Dispersion: Level 2 (Lasers)
    • Propulsion
      • Conventional Propulsion: Level 1
      • Fission Propulsion: Level 1
      • Fusion Propulsion: Level 2
      • Gravitational Propulsion: Level 0
      • Maneuvering Thrusters: Level 2 (Antimatter)
  • FTL
    • Warp Drive: Level 2
• Theory: Halves rolls for every level below requirement, doubles for every level above.
  • Physics
    • Particle Physics: Level 3
    • Gravitational Physics: Level 3
    • Quantum Physics: Level 3
    • Exotic Physics: Level 3
    • FTL Physics: Level 3 (43 Progress)
    • Plasma Physics: Level 2
    • Antimatter Physics: Level 4
    • Astrophysics: Level 2 (50 Progress)
    • Biophysics: Level 1
    • Thermodynamics: Level 2
    • Electrodynamics: Level 3
    • Chemical Physics: Level 1
  • MatSci
    • Alloys: Level 1
    • Exotic Carbon: Level 2
    • Superconductors: Level 2
    • Magnets: Level 2
    • Exotic matter: Level 2
    • Nanotechnology: Level 2
    • General Materials Science: Level 2
    • Chemistry: Level 2
  • BioSci
    • Genetics: Level 1
    • Cloning: Level 1
    • Cybernetics: Level 1
  • CompSci
    • Hardware Based AI: Level 3
    • Drone Control: Level 3
    • Research AI: Level 2
    • Friendly AI: Level 1
    • Electronics: Level 3
    • Programming: Level 2

 

[Ginger Maniac]

someone miscalculated the amount of propellant needed to get the interferometry array into orbit by 3 orders of magnitude and completely destroyed the Medium Spaceport

Click to shrink...

Rest of the turn? Great. All the important stuff went through, and I am very happy about that.

This particular mess though? Somebody has some serious explaining to do. If they're very convincing, and even more contrite, they might get away lightly and only be blacklisted from any and all pursuits even tangentially related to rocketry until either the heat death of the universe or the end of the Carmote, whichever comes later. They can count themselves exceptionally lucky that we have the Elevator, and thus do not need the spaceport any more.

 

[Isaacssv558]

Rest of the turn? Great. All the important stuff went through, and I am very happy about that.

This particular mess though? Somebody has some serious explaining to do. If they're very convincing, and even more contrite, they might get away lightly and only be blacklisted from any and all pursuits even tangentially related to rocketry until either the heat death of the universe or the end of the Carmote, whichever comes later. They can count themselves exceptionally lucky that we have the Elevator, and thus do not need the spaceport any more.

Click to shrink...

Your Espionage rolls were really, really bad, especially that one. You were very lucky the interferometry array was a small project, if it had been the size of say, a large orbital shipyard, you probably would've lost a few cities (I'm thinking you accidentally crash it into your lunar colony and lose 5 cities+50k Carmote). I generally try to avoid screwing you over on crit fails (You'll only risk the Elevator on a Nat 1.) but you're going to lose something, potentially even something important (It depends on how bad your roll was and how large the project was, a Nat 1 building a teddy bear wouldn't have any real consequences).

Basically, the severity of the crit fail, and the magnitude of the project, determines both the importance and the quantity of the collateral damage.

 

[Ginger Maniac]

Wow. That would have been really nasty. Is there anything we can do anything to protect ourselves from the worst effects of critical failures? Not completely eliminate them of course, just to get some sort of saving throw against total disaster?

 

[Isaacssv558]

Wow. That would have been really nasty. Is there anything we can do anything to protect ourselves from the worst effects of critical failures? Not completely eliminate them of course, just to get some sort of saving throw against total disaster?

Click to shrink...

You could try building/researching some sort of failsafe mechanism/procedure. For example, you could use a second slot as an action to "double check" the work of the first action, giving a reroll on a crit fail. You could also come up with an idea for a new tech. Also, the damage is usually limited to things related to the action, so the Elevator is only at risk from things launched with it, and even a Nat 1 would probably only destroy a portion of the cables.

Basically, put an idea/plan into an action. The more specific it is the better chance it has of working. (Assuming the idea is good.)
e.g.
Development
-- Develop failsafes to disconnect Space Elevator cables without damaging the rest of the structure in event of an emergency.

 

[Ginger Maniac]

Excellent. I accept that crit-fails will happen, but it's nice to have options to make them less likely or damaging.

Next order of business is to decide on what slots the colonies will have, because there can't be a plan until we know what actions we can take where, and since by my reading they can't be switched around once we've set them, there'd probably best be a vote on the topic.

[x] Sith: Expansion, Industry, Economics
[x] Darth's Moon: Industry
[x] Vanmote Belt: Expansion, Industry, Economics

Mostly because these are the three areas which our colonies require in order to be able to grow themselves without input from Darth. Once they're fully-developed, we can start doing Research and stuff, but I'd rather not be spending actions from the Capital on Colonies when we can be spending them on buildup and ships. And since more Industrial actions are always useful, that's what I'd like from Darth's Moon.

 

[Isaacssv558]

@Dark Ness @Ginger Maniac @KleverKil'Vanya @Nevill @tri2 @The Froggy Ninja
To be clear, the vote is first on the assignment of actions and then on how to use those actions. You can create a plan for both action assignment and use, but it will be disqualified if another action assignment wins.

Basically, you have three options:
1. Vote on actions, then vote on turn plans.
2. Vote on actions as part of a larger turn plan.
3. Vote on both separately and concurrently, but risk invalidating some plans.

 

[Ginger Maniac]

Just to be absolutely clear, once we've decided on which action slots the Colonies will get, they're set in stone for the foreseeable future, yes?

 

[Isaacssv558]

Just to be absolutely clear, once we've decided on which action slots the Colonies will get, they're set in stone for the foreseeable future, yes?

Click to shrink...

Yes, you would have to spend a turn using every single action one of the Colony's actions to change the assignment of a single action.

So, to change the assignment of one of Sith's actions you'd need to spend all three of it's actions. Note however that you will get another 7 actions, which can be freely assigned, once the Colony is fully developed.

 

[Isaacssv558]

@Dark Ness @KleverKil'Vanya @Nevill @tri2 @The Froggy Ninja

The vote on action distribution will be closing in 24 hours.

 

[tri2]

[x] Sith: Expansion, Industry, Economics
[x] Darth's Moon: Industry
[x] Vanmote Belt: Expansion, Industry, Economics