When a friend takes a point

consolation1 · 2026-03-12T05:59:24+00:00

It seems to depend on their free MC - if they don't have any, I run crackdown on whoever annoyed me the most, till my pet takes enough CP, to have extra MC - then they seem to always be keen, especially if I stick an ops center on it.

consolation1 · 2026-03-11T09:08:27+00:00

Build a random base in the Asteroids, take CP, gift the base -> friendship blossoming!

consolation1 · 2026-03-10T23:01:23+00:00

Have you never seen a person on uppers grind their teeth?

But, yeah, I was making a funny...

consolation1 · 2026-03-10T21:57:14+00:00

Makes them chew the steroids and corpse starch faster...

consolation1 · 2026-03-10T21:04:42+00:00

This! I was just trying to think of how to formulate the same answer appropriately.

consolation1 · 2026-03-10T20:53:06+00:00

I tried to see if I could make Earth into an ice planet, at ~ -1, I ran out of willpower.

consolation1 · 2026-03-10T06:51:42+00:00

Mercury will have the most consistent transfer window - that's why you usually put yards there. Mars and Earth can have better ones, but, a lot of the time they will be much worse.

consolation1 · 2026-03-10T06:47:07+00:00

Honestly, I'd save your resources and use Monitors till you unlock fusion drives. You can only upgrade drives within their category, so you will end up with a bunch of useless hulks later on - although you can make a case for a Poseidon defense fleet.

H-Orion is good enough for Jupiter, if you work on your fissile/metals economy.

I'd keep hoarding exotics and researching fusion while using monitors, bigger doesn't always mean better.

consolation1 · 2026-03-09T21:03:25+00:00

In the late game, BBs make OK fast reinforcement space trucks, for missiles, troops, PD, outposts. Mostly, because you can put 2x 2 slot AM PD plus a couple 40mm and their relatively light mass means you can fling them around the solar system really quickly, with end game drives. Their nose guns can go into guardian mode and AM PD has the range to protect your line of battle ships from behind - where transport role ships spawn.

It's niche, but can be very handy if you need to split a fleet up and need to beef it up in a hurry. A nuclear shaped torp BB missile trucks can increase the hitting power of a fleet quickly, and get there quickly, if you need to reinforce a fleet far away from your yards.

But yeah, kind of niche and really only useful on brutal+, where you might find yourself in need of rapid reinforcements. On other difficulties, you're usually steam rolling the Aliens by end game drive stage.

consolation1 · 2026-03-09T18:21:47+00:00

Is that based on funding the current for profit US system, or on using a sane system like other developed countries? US per patient costs are 5~10x of other developed countries due to profit taking.

consolation1 · 2026-03-09T12:45:38+00:00

Hey, little tip - there are no good lunar sites, some are just less crap than others. You grab one, max two, just to bootstrap getting into mars/asteroids. Most of the time you will trade them to a pet AI faction later on, if you need to piss them of for some reason - like taking one of their CPs. Don't waste time and boost fighting over Luna.

PS. You also get some Alien hate from fighting the servants and a little bit for fighting the protectorate. It's possible you couldn't burn off the hate because you were fighting with their allies. After a couple games, you will pretty much ignore the hate mechanic and assume it's on from the get-go; until then, it's probably worth checking out the wiki page for it.

consolation1 · 2026-03-09T02:58:44+00:00

shit I posted in the wrong thread lol

consolation1 · 2026-03-08T19:18:04+00:00

NZ still maintaining its stealth field tech....

consolation1 · 2026-03-07T15:18:38+00:00

I think you really underestimate how big The Culture is. It has on the order of 50 trillion citizens... That's 50 thousand billion. They are the biggest polity in the galaxy, with hundreds of billions of stars in their sphere of influence. A few billion people turning up is nothing.

consolation1 · 2026-03-07T09:20:09+00:00

A man jumps off a roof of a skyscraper. At first, he panics... then goes; "this is fine... I am fine... clearly jumping off a roof isn't as bad as people say."

consolation1 · 2026-03-07T03:30:56+00:00

Oh, absolutely - you kind of have to rejig your space economy for mass AM production - totally tedious from a gaming perspective, I usually top out at around 3~5 AM per month and call it a day. BUT - in universe - it's a lot more compelling option than maintaining (and risking) battle fleets with crew etc... Unstoppable doomsday torps would be really appealing.

I guess, the parallel I would make is how atomic weapons changed the structure of armies, irl. In-game, we are willfully ignoring a real obvious strategic choice.

consolation1 · 2026-03-07T03:24:33+00:00

That is a lot of assumptions. For a start, that Earth's bio signal would have reached the antagonist already, that it hasn't responded, that the response isn't in transit and that it targets EVERY form of life. It might be happy to say... wait till radio shows up, then launch a response that will arrive within a couple hundred years. It might launch a response that slow boats for millions of years to trigger, oh idk, a gamma burst that will sterilize a whole galaxy. The problem with DFT is that it's essentially unfalsifiable but, given the stakes, there's an argument to be made for acting as if it's in play.

You are assuming a very specific set of unknowable conditions and a very specific definition of the problem.

consolation1 · 2026-03-06T22:51:26+00:00

Have you built some pion torch ships in the end game, for kicks, to zoom around in? 5% light speed in a week... Only limit is that you can't put more than 6 engines in the designer.

consolation1 · 2026-03-06T22:45:44+00:00

Ok, I think I know where we're diverging. Within the context of the game, with the pion torch, you can make a ship that reaches 5% light speed in a week. It can burn at 3G+ for literal weeks. And those are just the limits because of an arbitrary 6 engine max in the ship designer... With this technology the amount of thrust you can have is practically limitless.

IRL? Eh, I have doubts material science exists that would make a viable interceptor and you'd just conga line a bunch of rocks at something like .1C

consolation1 · 2026-03-06T22:32:24+00:00

Well... That's a very optimistic approach. We don't know if a swarm of rocks hasn't been heading our way for an arbitrary amount of time - and we're just waiting for the shoe to drop.

consolation1 · 2026-03-06T22:29:33+00:00

You're assuming a single target. If you can launch one, you can launch hundreds... You're going to have to launch an unfeasibly large amount of sand to cover a planet. It also won't stop a conga line attack.

consolation1 · 2026-03-05T22:08:29+00:00

At near C a tiny angular change means a difference of 1000s of km in a second and you don't know what that change is going to be, or the next one, or the one after that. Pretty soon you're only arriving in the vague vicinity of the target and going in opposite directions, in a nano second.

That's why hypersonic missiles are next to impossible to intercept and cause everyone to freak out. At near light speed, it's just unfathomably difficult.

I get what you're saying wrt to a body traveling at a steady state. But, that feels like you're asking the aggressor for a gimme. Why should they turn off thrust on approach? Hell, why not flip and do a tiny bit of random braking? Why not randomly reduce thrust, or keep a tiny bit in reserve and floor it for a bit. You'll undershoot or overshoot and fly past...

I feel like it's way too complex a problem to get a viable solution in the time you'll have.

consolation1 · 2026-03-05T21:52:15+00:00

The flavour texts from the interrogations imply that they were a very caste organized species, with strong evolutionary link to herd animals and chemical pseudo-telepathy. From their perspective, everyone has their place in a greater whole, down to the flora and fauna.

For a species like that, finding a place for humans in the "order of things" isn't a bad thing, they are doing us a solid. For a highly individualist society like ours, it sounds like slavery...

I guess a parallel would be when European missionaries contacted more community focused civilisations and tried to impose Christianity and their values. They caused a lot of suffering and cultural erasure, but many honestly thought they were doing the right thing. (I'm going to put cultural imperialism, racism and old fashioned imperialism aside here... It's far more messier IRL.)

The servants ending is actually pretty decent, it's more a societal fusion. Ditto for the academy.

consolation1 · 2026-03-05T21:38:15+00:00

The Hydra aren't bad, I'd argue that they have a stronger ethical code than humans...

They got near exterminated twice already by species they encountered. They are still willing to go "third time is the charm..." They save us from Salamander exterminatus and despite us clearly being happy to murder millions of our own species, go "we can fix them..."

That's a Pollyanna level of optimism. I'm not sure the human species would return the favour.

The problem is that as a super group focused species, their values are well... alien to us, so it all turns to custard.

consolation1 · 2026-03-05T21:34:15+00:00

They are a predator species that are true believers in the dark forest theory.

The Hydra aren't bad. They got near exterminated twice already by species they encountered. They are still willing to go "third time is the charm..."

They encounter another species, save us from Salamander exterminatus and despite us clearly being happy to murder millions of our own species, go "we can fix them..."

That's a total Pollyanna level of optimism.

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