possible_futures = surprise_free_scenarios       +
                    canonical_variations          +
                    forseeable_possible_surprises +
                    the_unexpected

Kahn pointed out that the most surprising thing of all would be for any surprise-free scenario really to come true. He recommended surprise-free scenarios, not as prophecies, but as useful baselines from which to set out on explorations of possible futures.

[1] On Thermonuclear War  and  On Escallation: Metaphors and Scenarios
[2] The Next 200 Years,  Towards The Year 2000  and The Coming Boom

This document presents a surprise-free scenario for a Stellar Emperor (tm-Kesmai) War.

This is the barest start on a work in progress.
It will become the basis for at least one of the Dead Seeker Scrolls.

***** Please point out errors and suggest improvements! *****
 mailto:monty@sprintmail.com

1. Land Rush: Probes R Us!
2. Hunting for Targets: We've got ours -- where are theirs?
3. Farming: Guns and Troops are free! -- if you have a Transport! (And if you can keep it!)
4. Initial Conquests: Destroyers R Us! (But my kingdom for a load of Figs!)
5. Midgame: The race for larger ships, planetary ping-pong, trust and betrayal
6. The Victor Emerges -- or maybe not!
7. Stagnation and Stability: Guns R Us!
8. Endgame PM: Can I get 90% into Services?
9. The Gnab Gib ("Sleeping in Light?")

Everyone stampedes out of the Imperial Bases (Imps), looking for good planets.

Things to do:

• Grab the best planets you can find, before the Other Guy does.
• Start growing a Transport to defend with.
• Start growing a Destroyer and Figs to attack with.

With evaluation online:
For each star system:
  Send a probe.
  If system scan shows probable hi-hab planet(s) then
    geo-scan each possible hi-hab planet
    if truly hi-hab then
      if worth taking now then
        survey it
        if owned then record owner
                 else go take it
      else
        record it as "interesting".
  If system scan shows habitable planets
             but shows no probably-hi-hab planets
     or
     the probably-hi-habs were really low-habs then
    either use the system for early shipyard(s)
    or     just record the system as "farmable".
  If system scan shows a single uninhabitable planet then
    record the system as a "Wormhole candidate".
  If system scan shows multiple uninhabitable planets then
    record the system as "uninhabitable".

With Evaluation Offline:
As above, but do not bother to do any system scans.

Just keep the probe moving from one system to the next, as fast as you can.

This process collects the star system characteristics in the wars\se##.gxy file on your PC. The SURVEY.EXE program -- part of the Game distribution -- lets you browse that file offline, do selective retrievals based on habitability and metal, manipulate the color codings (in wars\se##.txt) and dump the data to a textfile for additional processing using your own automation, like maybe a spreadsheet.

Early Shipyards:
Each serious player immediately sets up early shipyards on moderate-to-high-metal planets (hab doesn't matter) to grow

•    at least one Transport (for Farming)
•    at least one Destroyer (for initial conquests)
•    Fighters (for initial conquests)

Nuances:

1. A competent team will allocate scouting assignments to assure full coverage without overlaps.
2. A player who runs out of slots, but not out of stamina, might help another player (teammate?) search for good planets.
3. If your slots are full of 80-habs, and you find an unowned 100-hab/100-met, you'll know what to do.
4. Scouts cannot take planets that have non-0 owners, so why do you need any troops at all until Destroyers are possible? You can fill those houses with colonists building houses!

Things to do:

• Find all (potential?) enemy bases.
• Find all Wormholes.
• Adjust PM for:
•   running out of food
•   running out of Mining (metal-refining) capacity
•   running out of Engineering capacity
•   paying off the loan
•   planet growing faster than Shipyard and/or Armaments
• ?Combat to interfere with enemy scouting?
• ?Combat to demoralize enemies?
• ?Combat for fun?
• ?EST-and-ABA to destroy enemy farming prospects?

Timing:
In an un-accelerated (4-week) War, Transports are possible about 45 hours after the start of the War.

Things to do:

• Gather free Guns and Troops to defend own bases.
• ?Destroy enemy farming prospects?
• Combat to defend friendly Transports
• Combat to destroy enemy Transports

Standard farming procedure:
Pick up your TRansport from the early shipyard where you grew it.
ABAndon that base, to free up a slot.
For each habitable planet without a base,
  drive up to it in your TRansport,
  ESTablish a base there,
  pull off the 100 troops and 1 gun
    that come free with a new base,
  ABAndon the base to free up the slot again and
  drive on.
Periodically visit your bases to drop off the harvest.

Keep doing this until you either run out of planets, fall asleep at the keyboard, get your TRansport killed (either by the enemy or by your own stupidity), feel your defenses are good enough, or just get sick of doing it.

Nuances:

1. Don't drop your troops on your growth bases until just before they're attacked -- you need the houses the troops would occupy for colonists building houses!
2. Of course, if you wait too long, the Enemy will drive up with a Destroyer and take the base away from you before you drop any troops at all..

Stockpiling ships at Imps:
You can switch from a non-Scout to a Scout only at an Imp.
Your non-Scout will be safe while in Imp mothball storage
BUT
it must be relatively undamaged when you mothball it, or the Imp will scrap it
AND
it can be exciting getting it into and out of the Imp.

WARNING: Ships mothballed at Imps lose all figs+guns+troops aboard!

Timing:
In an un-accelerated (4-week) War, Destroyers are possible about 60 hours after the start of the War.

Things to do:

• Take bases you want from Independents.
• Take bases you want from the enemy.
• Combat to destroy enemy Destroyers.
• Combat to defend friendly Destroyers.
• ?Destroy enemy shipyards?
• ?Destroy shipyards on owner-0 bases?
• ?Destroy enemy ships and figs abuilding?
• ?Burn enemy bases you and your friends do not want to hold/cannot hold?

• Capital ships are rare and precious.
• Fighters are still hard to come by.
• You can still get useful numbers of Troops by farming.

Farmed guns dominate defenses.

But a Transport hauling in defenses to a base under attack is dead meat on the attacker's table, unless friendly Scouts go in first to kill the attacker or drive him out of Space.

This is the High Summer of useful combat:

• Capital ships become plentiful.
• Fig supplies increase
• Planetary defenses are still relatively weak

Planetary defenses eventually become strong enough to resist single-ship attacks, even using stagers.

But no planet can support enough troops to man enough guns to resist a simultaneous attack by a large force of large ships. So the best planets sometimes bounce back and forth between the leading teams.

The importance of having enough attacking ships to overwhelm the defenses drives the formation of large teams.

But the importance of surprise -- to strike, conquer, and haul in defending troops and guns before the defenders can mobilize an effective opposing battle force -- makes spies valuable, and betrayal tempting.

Planetary growth rates fall as the cost of building a house rises once population passes 100,000.

As planetary defenses harden up -- and maybe as enemy ships and shipyards get destroyed? -- one team becomes dominant and the others become demoralized.

Or maybe not!

The planetary defenses on the major planets of the dominant team(s?) become too strong for anyone else to challenge effectively.

The Master-class PMers who still have the very best planets duke it out in the PM menus.

They kick us all out of the Galaxy, run the Final Scoreboard, and post the winning scores.

And we all catch up on sleep so we'll be ready for the Next One! 8-)

Politics is the art of acquing the power to govern -- that is, to direct the activities of the group.

The fundamental political act the SE Game automation supports is Alliance Formation.

• By inviting a ship to join an alliance, all the alliance leader really offers the player who owns that ship are the abilities to
• participate in coordinated attacks, using the "Transfer Control" function (which only works within an alliance),
• repair at bases whose owners have opened them to the alliance,
• pick up ammunition from bases open to the alliance, if the base owners have made stocks available, and
• send Game-Mail broadcast to all members of the alliance at once.
• By accepting an invitation to join an alliance, the owner of the invited ship
• accepts those abilities,
• exposes himself to alliance-broadcast Game-Mail from every other member of the alliance and
• exposes himself to public view, through the Alliance Roster display, as a member of that alliance.

And it is commonplace to find cohesive groups of cooperating players who don't bother to go through the dance:

• Sometimes the disadvantages of publicity outweigh the advantages of Transfer+repair+ammo+Game-Mail broadcast.
• Sometimes the Game-imposed cap on Game-alliance size is too low to accomodate all members.

Logistics: "the stuff that if you don't have enough of, the war will not be won as soon as."
(Thorpe, Pure Logistics, cited in Thompson, The Lifeblood of War, page 3.)

Fundamental choices:

• Grow or do something else?
• Attack or defend?
• Within offense: ships or figs+troops?
• Within defense: guns or troops or ships?
• How much time can you afford to spend in the Game?
• farming = gathering "free" troops and/or guns
• sitting at a planet waiting to be attacked
• How much can you rely on allies?

F1. Early Planet Attacks -- One Defending Scout vs One Attacking Destroyer

Strategic Context:
Typical of "Initial Conquests".
 

Key questions about the tactical situation

Attacker Repair in target system or not? Scoop in target system or not? How many free slots? (0/1/>1) Staged or not? Ammo stocked on stager or not?

Defender Own target or not? Repair at target or not? Get ammo from target or not? Rebuild in target system or not?

1. Player Time Management
2. Multiple Accounts: Mules and Spies
3. Automation

Efficient use of time:

Scout while farming

Scout while hunting

Scout while hauling