After Action Report - Klingons and Borg

[Warp Core Breach]

Team,
I've played 2 games through about as far as I want to go, one as Klingons and one as the Borg. A couple of observations and suggestions:

In my Klingon game, I was well on my way to conquering the AI players. Sol was taken, Cards were small/insignificant, my erstwhile allies, the Roms, turned on me after I conquered Sol, and so I was beating them back. Then the Borg showed up, and I am now being overrun. I'll keep at it a little longer, but it feels kinda hopeless right now.

Against 2 Cubes and 1 Diamond, my entire fleet of 20+ Level II and III ships were unable to penetrate shields and stop them (shades of Wolf 359!). They just moved from system to system assimilating each in turn. The only way to slow them is raising planetary shields, but that slows them, nothing more. Right now my approach is to come along behind and reconquer the systems they take. I'm hoping to strand them, but so far, systems are close enough together, that they are able to conquer the next system faster than I can cut them off. They must be adding shipyards really quickly...

1. 20K+ of shields is pretty much unassailable (at turn 280 and Tech Level 7, how can I be too weak?).
2. transports are too expense. I wiped out my backlog of 80-90 Dilithium and still didn't have enough transports to execute my strategy of stranding their force. Is there a way to make the transports themselves reusable, just have them load up from planetary garrisons after an invasion?
3. building transports depletes garrisons, which makes sense, however, I've found myself with transport construction being on hold due to not enough troops on the planet. Seems troop buildup is potentially too slow?
4. how can an ally, with regard/trust both at 1000 declare war on me? I immediately asked them to ally with me again, and they accepted, then next turn after accepting, immediately declared war again (my trust meter is at 0 for them now ). Is there some sort of diplomatic penalty for conquering a major power's home system? I'm wondering if that is what triggered them.
5. speaking of odd, it feels like the Borg are ignoring the AI players and beelining to my systems. In one spot I ended up battling both a Borg Probe and a Romulan Scout. Why the Rom/Borg ships were all friendly in a single spot seems odd. The Rom was a Scout I and didn't have a cloak.


In my Borg game, the resistance was truly futile. I've only lost a couple of Probes, otherwise, every ship I've built all game is still in service. One fleet (coincidentally) of 2 Cubes and 1 Diamond has marched across 2 quadrants. Romulus is assimilated, and Qo'onos is next. The only thing slowing me down is ship range - and Borg have the best ranges in the game. Couple of thoughts:

1. not having to build transports is an enormous advantage. A fleet of 4-6 Cubes/Spheres can system hop and nothing can stop them. 10 of them and a home system is toast. By turn 250, I had multiple fleets doing this.
2. the Borg build really slowly to start, but once they can assimilate a high-population world, their speed of growth far exceeds the regular powers. Automatically generating Alcoves and Manufacturing based on population means that even without "purchase" ability, power and a shipyard are quickly raised and the fleet is able to move forward.
3. the long range of the ships means that my strategy above of trying to strand them is likely be a losing proposition. As long as they can reach a populated system, they're not stoppable.

Perhaps the Borg as a playable power is fine to be overpowered, but as an AI-controlled player, they seem too disruptive/overwhelming.

[Iceman]

Thanks for the feedback, lots to take in.

With a recent change to torpedo damage, it was predictable that the Borg would be OP - I mentioned it somewhere. I should have adapted their ships' stats, but alas, I didn't... For now I've drastically reduced their shields (to 50~60%), bumped hulls up a bit, and reduced their range by 2 (this was something that I intended to do when the Borg would be "ready" - I think they're rather capable now, so I guess it's time).

I'll reply to the rest tonight.

[Iceman]

Against 2 Cubes and 1 Diamond, my entire fleet of 20+ Level II and III ships were unable to penetrate shields and stop them (shades of Wolf 359!).

1. 20K+ of shields is pretty much unassailable (at turn 280 and Tech Level 7, how can I be too weak?).

Hmm, Wolf 359 was 40 ships vs 1 Cube, and the Cube survived undamaged... Seems about right
Seriously though, the changes in the new patch will help with this. Hopefully it doesn't make the Borg too easy a target.

They must be adding shipyards really quickly...

They cannot rush build them, and they don't cheat. If the colony has a large population, it's possible that the SY is built quickly.

my erstwhile allies, the Roms, turned on me after I conquered Sol,

4. how can an ally, with regard/trust both at 1000 declare war on me? I immediately asked them to ally with me again, and they accepted, then next turn after accepting, immediately declared war again (my trust meter is at 0 for them now ). Is there some sort of diplomatic penalty for conquering a major power's home system? I'm wondering if that is what triggered them.

Will have to check, but it might have to do with the Roms and the Feds being Friendly. Shouldn't have happened, I think I have a note about this, comparing treaties to decide reactions.

5. speaking of odd, it feels like the Borg are ignoring the AI players and beelining to my systems. In one spot I ended up battling both a Borg Probe and a Romulan Scout. Why the Rom/Borg ships were all friendly in a single spot seems odd. The Rom was a Scout I and didn't have a cloak.

The Rom Scout I can cloak, but that was not the reason I'm sure. They were not necessarily friendly, they were simply both hostile towards you, so they showed in the enemies' side. They can still fight each other though. Most likely the Rom Scout retreated - if it was cloaked, it succeeded for sure.

The Borg AI does not ignore AI players, it chooses the best targets as any other empire would. You're probably a juicier target than anyone else.

[Warp Core Breach]

The Borg AI does not ignore AI players, it chooses the best targets as any other empire would. You're probably a juicier target than anyone else.

Hmmm, if say so. The Borg did skip over a minor power on their way to me. I made the mistake of diplomatically making that minor a member, and then the Borg turned around and assimilated it .

[Iceman]

The Borg AI does not ignore AI players, it chooses the best targets as any other empire would. You're probably a juicier target than anyone else.

Hmmm, if say so. The Borg did skip over a minor power on their way to me. I made the mistake of diplomatically making that minor a member, and then the Borg turned around and assimilated it .

Hmm, I'll look into that.

4. how can an ally, with regard/trust both at 1000 declare war on me? I immediately asked them to ally with me again, and they accepted, then next turn after accepting, immediately declared war again (my trust meter is at 0 for them now ). Is there some sort of diplomatic penalty for conquering a major power's home system? I'm wondering if that is what triggered them.

That was a coincidence. The Roms were on their way to attacking the J'Naii (*), and while on the way, you made them members; there's a check missing in there, but since the colony was already "yours" when they got there, they declared on you...

(*) For whatever reason, which I cannot discern. Do you happen to have a savegame some 10 or so turns before the one you posted in the other thread? It'd help finding out why they wanted to attack the J'Naii.
If this game (during those turns) was played with patches prior to 1nov, that might explain things a bit; empires were not filtering their targets (colonies and stations) properly, as that code was meant for minor races.


If you find anything that doesn't seem right, as smallish as it might look, please report!

[Iceman]

In my Borg game, the resistance was truly futile. I've only lost a couple of Probes, otherwise, every ship I've built all game is still in service. One fleet (coincidentally) of 2 Cubes and 1 Diamond has marched across 2 quadrants. Romulus is assimilated, and Qo'onos is next. The only thing slowing me down is ship range - and Borg have the best ranges in the game. Couple of thoughts:

1. not having to build transports is an enormous advantage. A fleet of 4-6 Cubes/Spheres can system hop and nothing can stop them. 10 of them and a home system is toast. By turn 250, I had multiple fleets doing this.
2. the Borg build really slowly to start, but once they can assimilate a high-population world, their speed of growth far exceeds the regular powers. Automatically generating Alcoves and Manufacturing based on population means that even without "purchase" ability, power and a shipyard are quickly raised and the fleet is able to move forward.
3. the long range of the ships means that my strategy above of trying to strand them is likely be a losing proposition. As long as they can reach a populated system, they're not stoppable.

Besides the already implemented reduction of shields and ship range (3.), other changes that can be made include:

(1.) decreasing fleet support for the Borg
(2.) increasing the cost of the shipyard ; and of Production Facilities too? Or setting a fixed amount of industry PFs on assimilation to make construction slower in larger systems

[Warp Core Breach]

(1.) decreasing fleet support for the Borg
(2.) increasing the cost of the shipyard ; and of Production Facilities too? Or setting a fixed amount of industry PFs on assimilation to make construction slower in larger systems

I'd vote for #2. After assimilating Romulus, I had 5 Alcoves and 30(!) Construction Units. 4,500 build points!

(*) For whatever reason, which I cannot discern. Do you happen to have a savegame some 10 or so turns before the one you posted in the other thread? It'd help finding out why they wanted to attack the J'Naii.
If this game (during those turns) was played with patches prior to 1nov, that might explain things a bit; empires were not filtering their targets (colonies and stations) properly, as that code was meant for minor races.

The Roms had declared war on the J'Naii right around the time I signed the Affiliation Treaty with them. Wasn't happy as I didn't want the Roms to kill them after I had worked them up to Affiliation. (Would have been nice to be able to ask/threaten the Roms to have them standdown... once you get diplomacy further developed!) I ended up paying extra to get to membership faster - I'm assuming adding credits to a treaty request actually does sweeten the deal. Unfortunately, I don't have a savegame. I'll try to rotate and keep more, just in case!

[Warp Core Breach]

Kicked off a new Dominion game and have a few new observations:

1. I repeatedly attacked a Fed colony ship. They were patient, but eventually declared war. Nice! They were also a little stupid. I had a scout ship hanging in a system, they kept sending the colony ship in. My scout didn't have the firepower to kill it, so shields refreshed, it kept reentering the system. Worked for testing the diplomatic impact of attacking Fed colony ships, however!

2. In the attached savegame, my colony ship in the Rousseau system (south-east of Omarian Nebula) just finished terraforming all the planets. Why can't I now colonize the system? My only option is "Avoid". This happened earlier in the game at another system, but I had a second colonizer nearby, and it was able to colonize the system that the terraforming colonizer could not.

3. Is "generate credits" not working? I'm running out of funds, so I left Omarian Nebula build queue empty. I've been adding population to production, but the negative revenue just keeps getting worse. Seems like populating more systems isn't helping either.

If you have a bug-tracking system, I'm happy to log issues somewhere, instead of using the forum. Let me know what works best.
Thank you!

dominion cannot colonize.sav

(548.12 KiB) Downloaded 75 times

[Iceman]

(1.) decreasing fleet support for the Borg
(2.) increasing the cost of the shipyard ; and of Production Facilities too? Or setting a fixed amount of industry PFs on assimilation to make construction slower in larger systems

I'd vote for #2. After assimilating Romulus, I had 5 Alcoves and 30(!) Construction Units. 4,500 build points!

We can have both if deemed necessary. The (1.) and (2.) markers were supposed to refer to answering your points 1. and 2.
Contrary to the other empires, the Borg can only have as many ships as their fleet support can pay for - you can check fleet support by hovering over the Credits Last Turn display.
Keeping their number of ships low should help with the issue of them expanding fast.

The number of Construction Units generated is the necessary to have all population employed. Not that great an idea, yes.
Any suggestions? Same number as Alcoves? Something else?

edit: for now, I've made it the same as Alcoves, but suggestions are welcome.

The Roms had declared war on the J'Naii right around the time I signed the Affiliation Treaty with them. Wasn't happy as I didn't want the Roms to kill them after I had worked them up to Affiliation. (Would have been nice to be able to ask/threaten the Roms to have them standdown... once you get diplomacy further developed!) I ended up paying extra to get to membership faster - I'm assuming adding credits to a treaty request actually does sweeten the deal.

Ah, that explains why they were heading there!
That's an interesting suggestion, about the request/threat. Which happened first, the DoW of the roms or your Affil treaty? Do you remember? It's important to determine the validity of what happened, and if an eventual threat would make sense.
And yes, credits in the proposal do influence the result, same as in an isolated gift.

[Iceman]

1. I repeatedly attacked a Fed colony ship. They were patient, but eventually declared war. Nice! They were also a little stupid. I had a scout ship hanging in a system, they kept sending the colony ship in. My scout didn't have the firepower to kill it, so shields refreshed, it kept reentering the system. Worked for testing the diplomatic impact of attacking Fed colony ships, however!

The scout thing, I'll have to check, but the colony ship should not target that system...

edit:
I checked, and it would only not target that system if you were at war with them.
The rationale is something like, if you could "claim" systems by planting a scout there, it could potentially be an exploit to deny the AI the ability to expand. An expert player in MP ...
Once you have a colony ship there terraforming it, they'll stop.

2. In the attached savegame, my colony ship in the Rousseau system (south-east of Omarian Nebula) just finished terraforming all the planets. Why can't I now colonize the system? My only option is "Avoid". This happened earlier in the game at another system, but I had a second colonizer nearby, and it was able to colonize the system that the terraforming colonizer could not.

Because that system is inside Tellarite territory. You need to declare war to be able to colonize it. My guess is that you didn't get the message box about it because you are Friendly with them, but I'll check.

edit:
It's the Tellarite's claim that is preventing you from colonizing it. This is how some minor races "expand"; they do not colonize, but they claim systems inside their territory.

3. Is "generate credits" not working? I'm running out of funds, so I left Omarian Nebula build queue empty. I've been adding population to production, but the negative revenue just keeps getting worse. Seems like populating more systems isn't helping either.

AFAIK, yes. Your fleet maintenance is way over your fleet support, so it is draining your coffers. Those 2 Cruisers are killing you.
You probably spent a bunch of money rush building shipyards? Or with gifts?
The other empires seem to be doing fine.

edit:
Trade Goods are working, just checked. Taxes were lowered a couple of weeks ago, which should account for a bit of your predicament. Right now, without any morale bonuses, Omarion should generate almost as much in TGs as in taxes (thus not building anything almost doubles its credits output).

If you have a bug-tracking system, I'm happy to log issues somewhere, instead of using the forum. Let me know what works best.

We can discuss the issues in the forums first, and then add them to the tracker as required.
Thanks!

[Warp Core Breach]

Because that system is inside Tellarite territory. You need to declare war to be able to colonize it. My guess is that you didn't get the message box about it because you are Friendly with them

That makes sense. I can see the grey territory box around the Tellarites' system. I had started terraforming before I met the Tellarites, so perhaps that is why I didn't know it was "claimed" already.

AFAIK, yes. Your fleet maintenance is way over your fleet support, so it is draining your coffers. Those 2 Cruisers are killing you.
You probably spent a bunch of money rush building shipyards? Or with gifts?
The other empires seem to be doing fine.

I didn't rush build them, but I essentially haven't stopped building ships all game. Was looking to go to war with Feds early, so I could test the things we discussed. Didn't pay attention to maintenance. My bad!

Regarding the Borg:

The number of Construction Units generated is the necessary to have all population employed. Not that great an idea, yes.
Any suggestions? Same number as Alcoves? Something else?

One suggestion might be to use (some fraction of?) the number of existing facilities and convert them to Alcoves/Construction/Power, similar to what would happen if a major power conquered them. The fraction representing destruction during the invasion. Just ensure the # of alcoves is not less than the min needed to sustained the assimilated drones.

Thanks as always!

[Iceman]

Because that system is inside Tellarite territory. You need to declare war to be able to colonize it. My guess is that you didn't get the message box about it because you are Friendly with them

That makes sense. I can see the grey territory box around the Tellarites' system. I had started terraforming before I met the Tellarites, so perhaps that is why I didn't know it was "claimed" already.

That's something that I discussed with erazortt a while ago. Should first contact be made when you start terraforming a system that is inside another (not yet contacted) civ's territory?
Right now you can kind of get around this issue by not contacting the civ before colonizing the system (a bit of an exploit). Sometimes you can infer the existance of a civ close by, detecting their ships in another system that might be close enough to claim the one you want - that civ might be an expanding minor or not, of course, so to be on the safe side just hold the contact.

In Small maps expanding minors might be a real pain.

Regarding the Borg:

The number of Construction Units generated is the necessary to have all population employed. Not that great an idea, yes.
Any suggestions? Same number as Alcoves? Something else?

One suggestion might be to use (some fraction of?) the number of existing facilities and convert them to Alcoves/Construction/Power, similar to what would happen if a major power conquered them. The fraction representing destruction during the invasion. Just ensure the # of alcoves is not less than the min needed to sustained the assimilated drones.

The reason I changed it to Alcoves and Construction Units only was to force the Borg to build energy facilities, because of shipyards and Maturation Chambers.
There's nothing like trying though, right? Will start with 1/3 or something, and we'll see how that goes.

[Iceman]

That was a coincidence. The Roms were on their way to attacking the J'Naii (*), and while on the way, you made them members; there's a check missing in there, but since the colony was already "yours" when they got there, they declared on you...

Fixed in the patch that was just uploaded.

One suggestion might be to use (some fraction of?) the number of existing facilities and convert them to Alcoves/Construction/Power, similar to what would happen if a major power conquered them. The fraction representing destruction during the invasion. Just ensure the # of alcoves is not less than the min needed to sustained the assimilated drones.

Done.

[Warp Core Breach]

Hi Iceman,
I think I hit a new diplomacy crash. The attached savegame will crash when you hit Next Turn.

Error log is not too helpful here. What I think is happening is that I tried to extort more money from the hapless feds than they had.

Btw, downloaded and tried the original BotF, just to remind myself why I disliked it so much. Yuck! that UI is awful. I couldn't get the window to scroll, totally painful. Didn't get past the first turn. The new UI is soooooo much better!!!

Code: Select all

Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.

   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowInvalidOperationException(ExceptionResource resource)
   at System.Collections.Generic.List`1.Enumerator.MoveNextRare()
   at System.Collections.Generic.List`1.Enumerator.MoveNext()
   at System.Linq.Enumerable.<SelectManyIterator>d__17`2.MoveNext()
   at Supremacy.Game.GameEngine.DoDiplomacy() in C:\Projects\Supremacy\Mainline\SupremacyCore\Game\GameEngine.cs:line 1107
   at Supremacy.Game.GameEngine.DoTurn(GameContext game) in C:\Projects\Supremacy\Mainline\SupremacyCore\Game\GameEngine.cs:line 283
   at Supremacy.WCF.SupremacyService.<>c__DisplayClass53_0.<DoTurnCore>b__0() in C:\Projects\Supremacy\Mainline\SupremacyService\SupremacyService.cs:line 638
   at System.Linq.Observable.<>c__DisplayClass130.<>c__DisplayClass132.<ToAsync>b__12f()
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
   at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
   at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
   at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter`1.GetResult()
   at Supremacy.WCF.SupremacyService.<DoTurnCore>d__53.MoveNext() in C:\Projects\Supremacy\Mainline\SupremacyService\SupremacyService.cs:line 641
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
   at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task)
   at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task)
   at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.ConfiguredTaskAwaitable.ConfiguredTaskAwaiter.GetResult()
   at Supremacy.WCF.SupremacyService.<ProcessTurn>d__52.MoveNext() in C:\Projects\Supremacy\Mainline\SupremacyService\SupremacyService.cs:line 523
--- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---
   at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.AsyncMethodBuilderCore.<>c.<ThrowAsync>b__6_1(Object state)
   at System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback.WaitCallback_Context(Object state)
   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)
   at System.Threading.QueueUserWorkItemCallback.System.Threading.IThreadPoolWorkItem.ExecuteWorkItem()
   at System.Threading.ThreadPoolWorkQueue.Dispatch()
   at System.Threading._ThreadPoolWaitCallback.PerformWaitCallback()

Here's the savegame:

dom crash fed.sav

(610.22 KiB) Downloaded 73 times

[Iceman]

Hi Iceman,
I think I hit a new diplomacy crash. The attached savegame will crash when you hit Next Turn.

Thanks for the log and the save, looking into it now!

Error log is not too helpful here. What I think is happening is that I tried to extort more money from the hapless feds than they had.

I guess they didn't like being extorted.
Did you propose a Cease-Fire, demanding some cash with it?
(we really need to make those SitRep messages a bit more clear, differentiating gifts and demands)

Btw, downloaded and tried the original BotF, just to remind myself why I disliked it so much. Yuck! that UI is awful. I couldn't get the window to scroll, totally painful. Didn't get past the first turn. The new UI is soooooo much better!!!

Couldn't agree more.



Your game seems to be doing fine now, in terms of cash?
Did you have any trouble with resources and garrison when building TTs in this game?