The Void - Tick 354 - Cycle 15

Hot war in the south and... trouble in the north?

It's been 40 turns since the last update and we've had a number of big set backs in the south.

• Crab/Lobster guy allowed the southern alliance to capture his Cryo Chamber. I'd been warning for some time this was a major liability so close to their front lines and it proved true. We should have forcibly taken that Cryo from him soon as he was starting to fail and glassed it.
• HelloThere had a failed attack on a key logistics star on a turn where the enemy dropped the warp gate, allowing them to win a decisive battle. In HelloThere (Maul)'s defence, he was wary of the attack and only encouraged into it by me and CRISPR after we'd seen the warp gate stay up a turn more than we would have left it.
• I've lost one star and I'm about to lose another. However they were outpost stars 0-1-0 on infra for the one lost and 2-1-0 for the one I'm about to lose. No big deal. 
• Additionally, far out west - UyScuti (Royluc) is being attacked by Corn/Athos. He says  Aogami, Meoworion, Corn, Athos and Mar are all loosely allied. This could be a problem because just as Royluc is not geographically best placed to help us fight the SE, we will find it difficult/impossible to materially help him. He's on his own.

There have however been some positive developments.

• GeneralKenobi is all but defeated. I just see one remaining star. 
• Despite losing a star (2 soon) I am stars 81, so net +3 since my last blog. 
• I made some important logistics updates and now have some beautiful logistics lines bringing my ships to the fronts.
• Dieste looks likely to support us and is preparing for war
• I think I'm in a good position game wise. Back against a wall, a sort of reliable peace north of me*(let's see) and my industry and power base flowing south. It'll be interesting to see how things look at the end of the game and how everyone was doing about this time but my guess is I'm in the top three players and might even be in leaderboard #1 right now.

The War

I'm seeing some nice coordination from Major Tom, TheBorg and Tube-Pipe - kudos to them. Let's see how well this group work together over the long run. I know Tube-Pipe (LeDazz) won't tire but I don't yet know the quality of his allies. Hopefully none of them are Zorg/Karmadrome. 

A note on a discarded plan. 

I've had to do some calculating for what will happen over the next 6-12 turns as there is a chance they have the potential to try an audacious snipe of my super binary which currently has a warp gate up. I have enough front line ships in place/arriving now to defend once I consolidate but there's a window here where I'm still a bit vulnerable because I will have the 836 in retreat north for several turns. That opens up possibilities to strike at the super binary but only if my opponents have a black hole with some sort of orbital array/telescope on to see (they can reach it via hyperspace) I've decided not to buy the specs necessary to defend against this attack.

Further south this is the situation as CRISPR/Maul see it.

TdT (CRISPR)

Ok here’s my front line for posterity. My overall strategy is defense and ramp for now, as I have no good strategic openings. I’ll wait for your northern numbers to show and for my generals to spread the front lines. My one stab is down on lobstah territory where I think I drive into an open gap for ledazz

And then the front lines from HelloThere's perspective.

We all need to start getting 200-300 carrier fleets onto each others stars to help with war hero attacks in the future. I also want to expand my scouting operation to give me better visibility. 

The war is fun! It's started out with some losses but I'm hopeful the tide will turn soon.

'Trouble'? in the north

HRE has long been a source of puzzlement for me and this is the latest confusion. We're marked as allies in the Diplomacy tab so he can't attack me but he has thundered 600 ships onto one of my stars last turn with no advanced warning and no clear reason why. However, elsewhere he has moved 150 ships AWAY from my border and I am not seeing anything elsewhere on the front that suggests he has decided to attack me (I'd expect to see a spike in carriers moving south even within his space) and we're still allies on diplo. I'm just going to ignore it and keep trying to persuade him to attack Sea Serpent, which he might infact have done as his end of the wormhole looks empty. 

Frankly, I can't afford a war with HRE. If he starts one next turn because he forgot to turn alliance off this turn then I will be sitting round the diplomacy table with him. I do not want a split front fight. So I'm just going to assume it's not going to happen and work on that basis.

Update: a few hours later but before the next tick. Had some discussion with HRE and fairly confident he's not trying anything funky.