Dear space diary - A rolling SotS jotter

[Heliocentric]

The Steam RPS Sots group "RPSotS" is having a game for inexperienced players obviously I'm familiar with the game, but I have played very little against people. The format of the game was a few turns a week, and after announcing that my favourite side was "Random" I found the game was under way. For the last few weeks we have stole an hour here or there and got the game rolling, This will be my AAR (DAR? during acton report) roughly 10 turns behind and obscuring any details that would really impact the current gameflow, but generally It will be quite open.

My Following post will simply describe SotS, from my point of view as a human empire, knowledge of the game is not required to read this.

Turn 0-16?: My Empire was ruled by an iron fist, the problem was it wasn't mine, After election I spent some time aboard the presidential [redacted]pleasure[/redacted] barge and A freak electrical storm turned off all communication [redacted]so we wouldnt be interrupted.[/redacted]


Turn 16: I return a while later to find the tactical command and Knowledge system(ai controlling player)AKA TaCoKS had been making crude choices in my absence, a few basic industrial technologies were researched, and the technology that allows the most basic Command 'n' Control ship, without a CnC ship the ships in combat with be limited to 6 and drawn at random from the systems population, with the most basic CnC up to 10 ships are allowed and they can be preset, that way keeping support ships like fuel tankers and colony pods out of the fight until all other forces are depleted, also another project was under research I shall codename Icarus which was still underway.

With any race in SotS bar Humans every star on the map is is a potential destination, some species are slower some are faster but every star is meaningful.

Humans see a hidden truth of space, rely on it and are imprisoned by it, space has natural roads between gravitational bodies, using these roads Humans are the fastest species in the game, without them they are the slowest.

Nodes.jpg
This is roughly how humans see the stars, note that roads cannot be dismounted, for either regular space or another road, so every journey is channelled by the map.

My Homeworld had 3 main paths from it, one road a dead end to a small and toxic world (with potential for terraforming) Another too far to travel yet (humans have a limited to how far any one leap they can take down a road, but future technology will extend my reach) except with an "extended range" scout ship making a one way trip and a third path of small hops along dusty boulder worlds. But these worlds have their most interesting aspects in space.

not my image, sorry internet

Turn 17-20: This is an Alien derelict, the husk of a once great weapon of war, Its a small piece of the command deck, broken and spinning in space but its weapons are still tracking hostiles (see: me). My Extended range recon ships so thoughtfully provided with lasers by TaCoKS was able under my command to dodge the fire arcs and in 2 rounds of combat blow off all of the derelicts weapons rendering it defenceless, what followed was piracy of the ships hull resulting in a short term tech rate bonus.

Turn 21-25: Nice as this was the real prize was in Orbit around yet another dust ball planet.
Internet, I promise I've started taking my own screen shots but I'm running a few turns behind

This is an Asteroid Monitor, rarer than the derelict, and more deadly, my token force had no means to challenge this hunk of death dealing so I simply drove away from it and fled the planet avoiding combat altogether, however after meeting an asteroid monitor a special project is sitting as a option in the research menu in what may take 12 turns or so your scientists will hack the abandoned rocks automated deffences and allow it to be controlled (as well as a small research rate bonus to offset your investment).

I'm afraid to report that at this point my love affair with Alpha protocol resulted in my outright missing a play session, but I am happy to report that the asteroid monitor fell under my control and then proceeded fought off an enemy fleet and TaCoKS built lots of terribly named warships and flooded them up the one channel open to me and started colonisation efforts on that small toxic world.

Turn 35-40: I go into the ship design menu and delete 30 rubbish design the AI set, Start a new design regime with various archetypes named after chess pieces (Rook, Knight, King etc.)so I can immediately identify them, but they will initially be meaningless to my opponents. And sent a number of terrible out of date ships back to my Homeworld to be scrapped, but yet... The real news was I had discovered an alien colony, and it was standing in my way.

Currently I'm up to turn 50.