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[LoSboccacc]

I'm just a couple of year into a pre TN start, with 5 research lab. Getting anything done takes ages

maybe I'll post a more detailed status as I get home from the weekend, as it seems that one may be unfamiliar with how painful a preTN empire is at getting things done 

[Korbac]

I feel for you, man. Personally I would change the start params to have 25 labs with preTN, but coping with 5! Must be a real headache. Good luck dude.

[gamefreak1]

Sorry I forgot you were doing a pre-TN start.

[LoSboccacc]

I feel for you, man. Personally I would change the start params to have 25 labs with preTN, but coping with 5! Must be a real headache. Good luck dude.

Well the only problem is that not knowing the game I can't judge my advancement, so I don't know if I'm lagging behind too much in technology/installations.

Slowness is not really a problem, I can just run a turn after the other while waiting research or construction. The only problem would be an attack early on. I can put up some sort of heavy low tech defense with Gauss as pd and two stages missiles for long range engagement to cope with low missile tech but I've not a chance of building something like that in this century.

I guess that may best strategy would be to mine everything out the system and with a jumpgate builder send some probe in nearby systems, then move all the mines in the new system to finance research and military expansion

It is a suicidal strategy getting out there early but even if I turtle a bit more I could not get to a point where expansion is safe enough. So I'll try to put some probes out there, find a sector empty and possibly not having any other jumps and try to get at least one weapon high enough to be useful

[EuchreJack]

In Real Stars, you are not likely to encounter aliens early on.

Besides, Losing is Fun.

[LoSboccacc]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm quite getting the hang of the basics, now I can at least make a detailed report of the relevant information instead of just finding things as I go. So it's time for a quick recap of the Terran Federation. Enough ooc!

Terran Federation, six month before the end of the quadrennial production&expansion plan.

We reached the space, but the problems on earth remains. We need some strong action in getting production and research on track before defining our development direction for the next period.

We need to balance production and production capacity increment. I've requested a detailed report from the earth census office, and the situation looks grim:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That thousand of conventional industry is quite too slow at getting anything done. But I simply cannot expand it because the grand total of 2 mines is not enough to getting anything built.

Which brings me to the next problem, resources:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(I don't know why capacity is 102 with two mines. hints are welcome )

I'm pretty worried about Corundium reserves. Those are just enough for a hundred of mines and some. We have an extremely slow geosurvey ship tugging around the sol, but most of the rock out there can only be mined by automated mines which costs twice. I've to be extremely careful in committing minerals to production.

It's imperative to get a cargo and some automated mines out there, so I can move them around and avoid a definitive resource stall. Even if I'll have a low stream of resources, the main point is to plan to never get to zero. Zero is death. Zero and we won't get anywhere, and we will succumb on this doomed rock, waiting for the friend of this scout ship to come over and reclaim what's theirs.

My military shipyard won't ever be able to get a cargo out in time. I'll need to stop wasting on its expansion, and try to get a commercial shipyard up and running.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also need to have a word of two with my engineers. "First Shipyard" is extremely lame for what it represent for us.

Also, our current ship design needs a complete overhaul. I was hoping in getting research researched faster, but now I've to revise my priority. I've a pretty good power and propulsion researcher, I'll need to put him at work.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Have a look at that poor guy, hopelessly in space, trying to reach a body that probably is faster than his ship:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So, I've make up my mind. I need to stop wasting stuff around and get more focused at not getting stalled. Probably industry production increment can be done at a low priority but a commercial shipyard right now would take 3 years. So much hard choices to do...

So be it, factories. 10 factories will take a year or so, and are thus my priority right now; I need to speed up that shipyard construction.

In the meanwhile, I'm researching a proper engine for my ships. It will take slightly less than a year to miniaturize and properly engineering a nuclear reactor to be used in space. Quite the coincidence. But that makes no engine. There will be some refinement required.

As it takes a while for that, I'll keep up expanding the military shipyard. If I skim a bit on the cargo design, I may even get by without a second shipyard, even if that means increased retooling costs. This is getting extremely frustrating and stressful, there are so many roadblocks and possibilities, opportunities and risks. We were promised the stars, but the truth is that we're simply not ready for the difficulties of the journey. Unrest is growing. People is getting scared by our impotence and desires better protection for their homes and families.

For example, now I'm wondering how much would it take to refit that now useless ICBM base to something useful for defending our system, and how much resources would we get by scrapping them.

But we're harmless and hopeless right now, so there is no reason to really try to make a stand for an improbable enemy attack. That
would just be a waste of resources right now, as even the most powerful defense we can design and produce will probably be just swamped and stomped and just being useless overall.

Let's see how this future will end.

[LoSboccacc]

addendum: ah! I was wondering what that "convert CI means" on the industrial tab. I'll be doing almost everything in the same way, but that will costs a bit less and probably be faster too  .

[Maldevious]

Posting to watch, no real advice from me. Played some Aurora about a year ago and ended up quitting when two alien races had a protracted war that kept advancing turns at the smallest increment. Interested to see how your game turns out.

[LoSboccacc]

sure. I'm pretty newb at the game and at storytelling, so please bear my awful prose.

I'm doing this mostly just for learning the game, but I see some potential too in writing a tutorial from a freshman point of view. The wiki is pretty good in detailing the steps from zero to combat, but not the meaning of each step, so in the end you have done everything but learned very little.

Or, at least, let me say that my learning process is just different than that, centered on doing stuff and not on watching stuff getting done. Just a matter of personal preference, I think.

[Azkul]

(I don't know why capacity is 102 with two mines. hints are welcome )

1 Conventional Industry functions as 0.1 Mines, 0.1 Construction Factories, and 0.05 Fuel Refineries, in case you didn't know, so if you have 1000 Conventional Industry, you would have the same effects as having 100 Mines, 100 Construction Factories, and 50 Fuel Refineries.

You have 1000 Conventional Industry and 2 Mines, so ( 0.1(1000)+2=102 ), which is where that number comes from.

[LoSboccacc]

Here is the breakdown of the conventional industries conversion to Post-TN Modern factory complexes.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This will get us a nice boost to production and resources, the situation is getting way better!

[LoSboccacc]

2031, 16th January.

The inner solar system, up to jupiter, has been mapped by our survey ship. It took an awful lot of time, but we can plan our next few moves to exploit the resources we found.

There are two main body we should start mining as soon as the old industrial complexes are updated and we have some automated mines at the ready: Venus and Callisto.

Callisto has 7M surface Duranium and 3M extremely hard to get Corundium.
Venus has a medium depth deposit of Duranium, worth 8M, while it has a whopping 35M of impossible to get Corundium.

Mining difficulty is not an issue right now, we just need to futureproof our industries, we need not to build up a fast mining complex right now as we can't build that fast; we'll get there but we still need to work in short term sprints and we still lack a lot of the other minerals, so our solar system mineral prospect is quite not done yet.

[LoSboccacc]

2035, 12th May:

After ten years of advancement in science and engineering, our research of the Nuclear Pulse Engine is completed. We now have a military prototype of a 40 power fuel hungry monster engine, to be used as a base for upgrading our designs and create our first military cargo.

2038, 23th November:

The shipyard is ready for the first cargo ship, the independence:

Code: [Select]

Independence class Cargo Ship    29,900 tons     98 Crew     230.8 BP      TCS 598  TH 200  EM 0
334 km/s     Armour 1-85     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 5980%    IFR: 83.1%    Maint Capacity 0 MSP    Max Repair 25 MSP
Cargo 25000    Cargo Handling Multiplier 5   

Nuclear Pulse Engine E1 (2)    Power 100    Fuel Use 10%    Signature 100    Armour 0    Exp 1%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 30.1 billion km   (1041 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
Still a slow ship by any standard, it’s a civilian design but it fits just fine in the continuously expanded and improved military shipyard. A fleet of these will allow for fast colonization of the solar system. The objective is to send everywhere useful 10 automated mines plus a mass driver, just to have all the colonies up and running before starting capacity planning for the next military expansion.

That means a 11 unit fleet for max efficiency, but first, I can start queuing up 11 trips for the internal planets of the solar systems and other near bodies.

Venus had the all so useful Corundium, while Mars is rich in Sorium, which will come handy later.

2039, 23th June:

Independence 001 is ready for starting our mining colonies. Every useful system has been marked for exploitation and is ready for the various installations to be deployed.

Getting hold of the Sol system is a thing of the past, we’re now full speed into the future: jump technology is being researched and soon we’ll start building some military capability too. To cut down research costs we’ll not be using beams in this phase, so we can avoid power reactors on ships and such. Instead, we’ll use the promising gauss tecnology for point defences and two stages missiles for delivering that extra punch in the last mile.

2039, 9th September:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A small achievement in our system exploration: mass drivers are on the ready.

2041, 25th December:

A strange Christmas. This morning, the slow, dumb, doomed piece of scrap that goes by the name of Cuba class survey ship completed, alone and under 100km/s speed, the survey of all the major solar system bodies and their moons. An incredible achievement for a ship so small.

It outlived his expectations, outlived its technology, outlived the hardest time of the Terran Federation economic crunch well after the space exploration and into the colonization gold age.

The venerable ship is now docked at Spaceport one at Earth, but it won’t be scrapped nor forgotten. Most of the engineers and economist are against my plan on the ship, but I’m not going to forgot an old friend and the first science vessel of the Federation.

Long live to Cuba 001, he will now be now know as Ship Zero, unique prototype of her class. May her future voyages be as peaceful and productive as the last thirteen year of service.

[EuchreJack]

Whenever I play Conventional Start, I ramp up the population, which increases the research labs and conventional industry.

Essentially, I play Space Soviets.

[LoSboccacc]

Is that something that happens in game creation only or I can have those benefits increasing my pop now?

By the way, I'm almost out of the initial stall. This evening sprint will revolve around colonies development and getting out the sector. I've some plan for that Ship Zero...

It will still take just a bit more to get military forces up and running, but things will gets interesting sooner than later.