takamouniverse.com

Ok. In my bid to expand my empire I tend to pick on a lot of NPCs. Some of these are even caveman level (tech 2). This series of scenarios is a portrait of a bid to try to take one planet. Forget the financial cost on taking the planet as I will never return the cost for taking it. This was about calculating what has changed and what needs changing. In each of these scenarios you can assume a tech 40 fleet and tech 40 marines against tech 2 defenders. There were originally about 6500 MU and 5000 HMU defenders on a size 9 world. With this scenario all the HMUs have been killed and so it is just a FTR strike from tech 40 carriers vs tech 2 MUs.

Scenario 3: FTRs against MUs

-Action 5-
342 Fighter group(s) vectored to XYZ31112 from Fleet 100
342 Fighter group(s) are entering strike range on XYZ31112 from XYZ3111
The fighters are attacking in 2 waves.
0 enemy interceptor group(s) destroyed.
0 Fighter group(s) destroyed by interceptors.
0 fighter group(s) destroyed by fort fire.
Fighter Group(s) estimate number of Forts to be 0
342 Fighter group(s) destroyed by ground fire.
346 Marine unit(s) destroyed
Fighter Group Commander reports HEAVY losses on all strike forces.

Can you say WTF again. Are marines now able to fire on FTRs or is there something I am not seeing. At first I thought the planet had rebuilt the HMUs but no. Not the case. Then my turn was not loaded last turn an so I had to get a late run. The original turn that had no commands issued showed something interesting around a different planet.

ZYX31112 Planetary sensors report arrival of a ROWAN fleet
Fleet in orbit is attacking ZYX31112
10 Hit(s) on enemy fleet by Interceptor(s).
Ship of class EX destroyed.
Enemy fleet destroyed!
Enemy fleet was owned by ROWAN

Why is this interesting you may ask. It is interesting because I had no FTRs on that planet! So this raises the question do planets have defenses, ie militia that are not part of our army or navy and if so how do we know what these defenses are.

Same comment on fighter losses vs extremely low TEC planets!

The ghost fighters is disturbing as it makes one wonder how well the AI mechanics logic is working. Hard to make logical decisions based on experience and observation when events like that happen......

Since lower tec levels now fight better than much higher tec levels, can we lower our planets tec level to make ourselves tougher? If Tec 2 Neanderthals chucking mammoth thigh bones can bring down high-tec fighters, how do I de-evolve my marines to make them kick alien heiny?

Actually, after giving it some thought, maybe some of these lower tec planets have been given high tec military bases via diplomat, thus providing these planets with the benefit of high tec defense.......

Marines and HMUs do have intrinsic Anti-Air combat strength. The bit about interceptors killing the EX is more perplexing. We did talk about instituting atmospheric FTRs many years ago but never did it. The culprit is more likely to be a damage message that was copied from another subroutine during the "middle" years when I did not own the game.