A MoO3 Storyhour (kind of... ;)

[Dougal DeKree]

I liked this story so well i wanted to share it with my fellow ENBoarders
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(written by CobraMKIII of the moo3planet.de Community, translated by Peterle123)

Part 1: The worries of Mr. S.


Audio-Recording of the 79. monthly session of the Imperial Senate under rule of the Terran Emperor Sibirius.

Assistant: "Your Excellency, I welcome you to the first monthly Absolution-Session under your command. What would your excellency like to begin with?"

Sibirius: "Well, I think we begin with finances, I want to take a closer look at that. So?"

Minister of Finance: "Your Excellency, may I congratulate you, things are looking good, the budget is balanced and we are even filling Imperial Treasuries. If you want to take a look at these Figures..."

Sibirius: "Oh, em, I see, I see, lots of numbers. How much tax is each province contributing to the empire?`"

MoF: "Well, that´s different for each planet, your excellency. We have to look up every planet at a time and..."

Sibirius: "ALL 24 of them!?! Does that mean that the governors set the taxes by themselves, without waiting for my wise decision?"

MoF: "Not exactly, your excellency, of course it is you who decides about the tributes. The Governors only add their little share by adjusting the taxes to your mind:"

Sibirius: " So they ARE setting the taxes."

MoF: "Well...yes."

Sibirius: (sighs) "Fine. Whatever. Forget about finances, everything seems to be running smooth anyway. Next I want to talk about colonization. I´ve been hearing strange reports about that."

Minister of Expansion: "Yes, you excellency?"

Sibirius: "Minister, is it true that, although I leave you every freedom for the colonization of new provinces, there are many delays?"

MoE: "Well, what...?"

Sibirius: "...I have to read that numerous freighters with 1000 colonists each are orbiting planets, because another freighter already landed there?"

MoE: "Those are regrettable individual cases and not.."

Sibirius: (angered) "You know how much resources such a freighter consumes, and you´re foolishly sending TWO of them to the same planet??? And here, the same thing all over again: A freighter in orbit around Alpha Ceti 5, in spite of the fact that planets 6 and 9 are colonizable, too. Only after several months the freighter landed on one of them. This could be done faster, don´t you think?"

MoE: "Please, your excellency, you must understand that there can be mistakes in coordination over such long distances, it is..."

Sibirius: "Lame Excuses! I can´t be so difficult NOT to send two freighters to the same planet, NOT to let freighters wait in orbit for 4 weeks, and it also can´t be THAT difficult to send the right number of them to colonize Red and Yellow class planets in the first place!"

MoE: "Certainly, your excellency, I will have the chain of command revised, as you wish."

Sibirius: "I hope so, Minister, or else I will send YOU to a red class planet. You alone. Alright, temper, temper. What´s next? Ah, Infrastructures."

Minister of Construction: "Your excellency?"

Sibirius: "Let´s get straight to the point. Development plans are saying that Mines and Research Centers should be build. But you allow that Recreation Parks are build on our two MAIN WORLS? And even tare down the High-Grav-Research Center for it? Are you totally out of your mind??"

MoC: "Umm, now, there was demand for it, so the governor thought he could..."

Sibirius: "...ignore my orders and those of my predecessors? Wrong thinking! Do I really have to control each and everything myself on every single planet? What do I have governors for?"

MoC: "But if you look at the big picture, everything looks great! With all due respect, your excellency."

Sibirius: "No, it DOESN´T! I want mines, and get farms, I want Spaceports and they are demolished! That´s not right!"

MoC: "But your excellency... it´s working."

Sibirius: "It´s inefficient! I want them to follow my wise decisions. From now on, nothing is going to be blasted anymore!"
(suddenly, a distant bang)
Sibirius: "What was that? Oh my god, somebody destroyed the Recreation park! A terrorist attack!"

MoC: "Oh, not quite, that was planned. A research center is going to be build there."

Sibirius: (snarling) "You mean like the one that was blown apart for this park three months ago?"

MoC: "Well, yes, that´s the plan."
(another bang, this time very close)
...

 

[Dougal DeKree]

Part2

Part 2: The worries of Mr. S.

Sibirius: "So, according to MY plans, we need a new Minister of Construction. Now, what about the Military Shipyards and fleets."

Minister of Defence: (gulping) "Your...your excellency?"

S: "Minister, I want to ask you something: Are we expecting an Invasion?"

MoD: "No, according to our Secret Services, there is nothing..."

S: "...AND WHY DON´T WE HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO THAN TO BUILD TROOP TRANSPORTS AND FILL THEM WITH OUR SOLDIERS???"

MoD: "You know, there are inexpensive and..."

S: "I don´t believe it, I order 10 dozen of Battleships to be build and get transports? Are you nuts?"

MoD: "Well it seems that we´ve set the priorities wrong, eehm..."

S: "Minister of Finance, I hereby increase the Grants for the Military to 40%, and you, my dear MoD: From tomorrow on I want to see the Yards rotating, and don´t you dare not to have a Battleship for me to throw a bottle of champaign at, in a few months!"

MoD: "As you order, your excellency."

S: "Good, so, here on Sol Prime build some new Shipyards, after that 5 cruisers to defend them, then I want a new yacht, and afterwards you start building Battle..."

MoD: "Um, your excellency, that are 4 wishes at once..."

S: "So what?"

MoD: "That really isn´t possible. After cruisers, shipyards and your yacht have been built, we can start planning to build Battleships, because the planning staff can´t handle so many requests at..."
(another bang, sounding suspiciously similar to the last one)

S: (deeply breathing) "Good. I see, some people in the planning office have to be visited. Let´s get to Research, what do we have here?"

Minister of Research: (enthusiastic) "Excellency, I am proud to report that we have finished the research on the new Plasma Cannon, which has an incredible Power and..:"

S: "Finally! Good News! Plasma Cannon, very interesting. Show me the plans."

MoR: "...Plans? I´m sorry but I don´t have them here."

S: "Alright, alright, so show me a model or a holo-picture."

MoR: "Um, we don´t have those, either."

S: "Come on, there has to be a picture, so that I can take a look at the thing!"

MoR: "Well, no. But, do you remember the old Laser Guns on our ships?"

S: "Yes...?"

MoR: "Well, the new Guns essentially look the same. They only have a small silver ring at the front and some nice looking, twinkling crystals at the back which glow when they are charged. Besides, there isn´t really much to see..."

S: (sighs again) "Ok, forget it. So let´s mount those things on our cruisers."

Vice-MoD: "Sorry your excellency, that´s not possible."

S: "Why is that not possible? Who are you, anyway?"

VMoD: "I´m the Vice-Minister of Defence."

S: "So where´s the real Minister?"

VMoD: "You just executed him, your excellency."

S: "Oh. Right. Now then, explain, dear new Minister of Defence, why can´t the new, fantastic Plasma Cannons be fitted into my cruisers?"

VMoD: "Oh, the new Cannons also require Energy couplings, static Compensation Field Generators, Cooling System, specialised Computer Systems and so on. Everything has to be rebuild for the new Cannons. Building a new ship is much easier."

S: "Oh well, ok. The new Battleships are already ordered, anyway... or nearly ordered, after the other THREE Orders have been completed! (new MoD herns) Let the Plasma Cannons be fitted on the Battleships. What else has been researched?"

MoR: "We have achieved breakthroughs with Ships Armament, Sensors, Shields and Ship Drives, your excellency!"

S: "Whoa, so many! Did we aquire any technologies from other empires?"

MoR: "No, actually we researched all of them by ourselves, things are going very well at the moment."

S: "Fine, fine. There aren´t any pictures of those technologies, right?"

MoR: "Oh, no, but there really isn´t much to see. The new armor is slightly darker than the last one, the sensors have slightly bigger dishes, the shield generators still are small black boxes, just a bit bigger, and the drives are filled with different fuel now."

S: "What kind of fuel?"

MoR: "Anti-Matter."

S: "Isn´t that dangerous? Where do we get all this anti-matter from?"

MoR: "You see...we have it stored, because we already knew 3 years ago that we would develop this drive sometime in the future."

S: (looking perplexed) "Ah. Good. Can we install anything of it into the cruisers?"

MoD: "Well, it looks like we can´t. We´d have to dismantle the complete hull for the new armor."

S: "But the shields, that´s only a small box! How small is it?"

MoR: "The new Class-5-Generator has an edge-length of 6 meters."

S: "6 meters??? You call that a ´small´ box?"

MoR: "Well, the Class-1-Generator had a length of only 10 centimeters, so the name was ok. Somehow, the term "small" stuck with it. Sorry, your excellency."

S: "Ok, ok. So can the box be installed into the cruisers?"

MoD: "The biggest room measures 5.5 meters in height, so we would have to remove some decks, install new girders, I think that´s too..:"

S: "Forget it. What about sensors?"

MoD: "Well the new sensor dishes would disturb the general view of the cruisers, the last dishes were specially designed for this ship class and so."

S: (snarling again) "Can you at least build in a new commando chair?"

MoD: "Well, the chairs are welded to the floor and I don´t think..."
(the usual bang)
...

 

[Endur]

This is so true.

 

[Heretic Apostate]

There are some suggestions, that seem reasonable to me (not being a programmer ), about how to fix some of these problems. The biggest problem, in my opinion, seems to be getting the viceroys to build the military items you want. As has been mentioned, the viceroys just LOVE building transports and ground units, at the expense of your combat navy. So there are several suggestions on how to tackle this.

First suggestion: An empire-level military build queue. Toss a bunch of ships in there, and the viceroys, when it comes time to build something in their military queue, will look at your empire-level queue and grab whatever they can build in a reasonable amount of time. This is a great suggestion, because it assures that the ships you want will be built, since you generally don't care what planet is building what, just as long as it gets built.
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Second suggestion: On the planet-level military build queue, list the items by type (planetary defense, shipyard upgrades, systemships, orbitals, indirect fire, and so on, all the way down to the ground combat units and ground support units). Each header should have a checkbox next to it. If the box is unchecked, the viceroy won't build that type of ship, building, or ground unit. This should prevent that Psilon research planet from attempting to build a bunch of Marines, for instance.
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Third suggestion: Prevent the viceroy from building shipyard upgrades on their own unless the industry for the planet is at a certain level. No point in building 10 shipyard upgrades if the planet only has two industry DEAs, right?
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Fourth suggestion: Have sliding-scale reserve limits (starship and ground unit). These limits would have a base amount. For instance, it might be 4 transports. Once there were 4 transports in the reserve, the viceroys would lose all impetus to build more. But 4 transports, while enough when you've only got one planet, surely isn't enough when you've got 20 planets, right? So, as you expand, the limit slides up. Let's say the limit for transports increases by one for every 20 pop points. Twenty planets will probably have 120 pop points (planets still being developed). So the empire would now want 10 transports in reserves. You're planning on going to war, so you increase your military budget (from Peace and Prosperity to Limited War, for instance). Well, at this point, the reserve limit should increase, as well (+10% for Peace through Strength, +30% for Limited War, +60% for Total War, +100% for Holy War; all numbers in this example are just suggestions). So now, your reserves will soon hold 13 transports. Not bad for 20 planets, considering most of them are newly settled.

At this point, there's been no actual need for you to tell the viceroys what to build, and no need to worry about the viceroys going crazy on their building. But what if you, personally, happen to like ground invasions? Here's where some imperial decision-making comes in. On a new screen in the Empire tab, you choose the level at which you want to emphasize each type of mission ship and the ground units (I'm not certain if you'd list all types of ground units; maybe just ground combat and support). You'd be able to set their emphasis at anywhere from 0% of default to 200% of default. This would affect the limits on the reserve, not the actual reserve itself. So, you like ground invasions, you set Ground Combat units to 200%, and your Transports and Support Units to 150%. This means your transport limit is now 20 transports. And then it will stop.

What does this mean? Well, want to update your fleet? Scrap excess obsolete ships. Or even better, build task forces of them, to throw at the enemy. Once the reserves drop below their set level (based on economy, size of empire, and personal preferences), the viceroys will start building again. And since you would have obsoleted the old designs, your reserves will be filled with the latest and greatest design. This means that each time you build a task force from the reserves, the viceroys will rush to replace them, so that your reserves are always full, but not to overflowing.

The more I think about this suggestion (mine, as you might have guessed, as with the "shipyard upgrades matched to industrial power" suggestion, above), the more I like it. No idea on how to balance the numbers, however...
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Note that, at any point in time, you can override the limits you've placed on the viceroy of a planet. Want that Psilon planet to start building Marines? Fine, plug them in, even though you've explicitly prohibited that viceroy from initiating any Marine recruitment. Want to bump the shipyard capacity up a notch, even though it'll take 30% longer to build ships of that size at this planet? Go right ahead. Already at the reserve limit for missile ships? Toss a few more on the planet, the viceroys won't care.

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Even better would be to combine all four suggestions.

The viceroys, when they have the opportunity to build something in their military queue, would check the empire-level queue to see what you want built. Since it's listed in the order you want built, the only ambiguity would be on when the best industrial/shipyard planets would get to your biggest ships.

It would compare the ships you want against their shipyard capacity. Since shipyard upgrades (as built by the order of the viceroy, as compared to the emperor) are based on industrial power, it'll be able to build the biggest ship size it's capable of in a reasonable amount of time.

However, if you've strictly prohibited this colony from building that type of ship or ground unit, it'll have to skip on to the next item.

Once your empire-level build queue is empty, and the viceroy is looking around for something to build, it'll compare the reserve levels against the build preferences from the text files, and build the most needed item allowed to bring the reserves up to level.

And suppose the empire-level build queue is empty, and the reserves are at or above their limits? Then the viceroy will just shrug and not build anything.

Anyway, I'm hoping that, given the number of times I've posted the mix of these four suggestions, the developers would implement them in the patch.

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Just an FYI: They're working on the first patch right now. There is no definite release date. The first patch will be a data patch, by which I assume they mean fixing bugs in the text data files, as well as maybe expanding on areas left not as complete as might be desired (for instance, tossing in one of the Encyclopedia mods made by the fans), as well as adjustments to things like (I would assume) data-driven AI aggressiveness (the part not hardcoded) or build preferences. Later on, they're going to put out the first code patch, which would be the hard part.

 

[Dougal DeKree]

Patch

Hi!

Yes, i heard about the patch - hopefully this patch will do something about the AI (and maybe even give us the "refit"-button...). Your suggestions seem fine to me, neither would they go against the macro-policy of the game nor against what the player wants.

As for now i used a fairly simple method to make the viceroys build the ships i want to have. It goes as follows:

Mark all ships obsolete except for the one type you want to have.
This will at least guarantee that you won't have a sky full of transports .)

Dougal DeKree

P.S.: I somehow had luck with this weekends galaxy (huge, 3-armed) - the star-lanes and number of empires makes for a very interesting game until now, we are stepping on each others toes all the time and my spies have all their hands full with work .)
Havin a blast the first time since i bought the game...

 

[Heretic Apostate]

Trouble with obsoleting the ships is that the viceroys always feel the need to build something military. So, no ships, or no ships within their range, and they'll start building troops or, worse, support units.

Try out some of the mods. Mods I would recommend (if I had used them yet ) are ones that slow down research (but watch out: population growth will outstrip upgrades, and you'll have to devote proportionately more to mining and bioharvesting, leading to a decrease in industry and research), ones that mess with spying, and so on.

Also, try to find the corrections for some simple typos (e.g., some ground unit weapons just have the wrong unicode, leading to errors).

Errors I know of, from groundcombat.txt:

Assault Blaster (...ABls) uses the Blaster Rifle code (...BlsR)
Plasma Pod (...PlsR) uses the Plasma Projector code (...PlsP)
Armored Exoskeleton (....EAEx) has an extra letter (...EAExo)
Veterans (GCXPVetn) is missing a letter (GXPVetn)

(note: the error with plasma pod may be why you get stuck with plasma projector from Energy 06 on up, since plasma projector is probably pulling some data from the plasma pod entry)

Hope this helps.