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Topic: Slow down a certain race's march *spoilers* (Read 1796 times)
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fossil
Core Team
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This is more of a curiosity than an actual game strategy, but it is possible to slow down the Kohr-Ah's Death March by almost 7 months without any mods of hacks. Not delay it, slow it down once it has already begun. There are two prerequisites: the Ilwrath must still be bugging the Pkunk, and you must have one of the 'Casters, and of course you need to be able to notice the start of their march  To get the full 7 months, the Spathi must be slave-shielded and the Pkunk must still be alive. And if they are alive and you are feeling lucky, you can slow the Kohr-Ah down by yet another 12 months, making the grand total 19 months!
All the dates here assume no Utwig-Supox intervention. The whole idea is to send the Ilwrath off on their merry Thraddash Dismemberment mission at just the right time. Send them off just when the Kohr-Ah wipe out the Mycon. In my experiment, this was between March 14th and April 13th, 2159 with Spathi slave-shielded, giving you a window of about 30 days. What happens next is somewhat amusing. The Kohr-Ah take out the VUX, Orz, ZFP and Umgah, but after the Umgah, the closest race turns out to be the Ilwrath if you timed your send-off correctly. The Kohr-Ah go after the Ilwrath, but can never quite catch them, even though the Ilwrath move slower. It is a classic Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise: every time the Kohr-Ah arrive at where the Ilwrath used to be, the Ilwrath have moved on! And because the Ilwrath never stop moving during their mission, the Kohr-Ah can never catch them. From there, it takes the Ilwrath about 5 months to arrive and finish themselves off, along with the Thraddash, with the Kohr-Ah closely watching them from sidelines. 
If the Spathi are slave-shielded and you time your send-off perfectly (ideally on April 10th), the Kohr-Ah bypass the Arilou initially and go after them once the Ilwrath are dead. This has an added bonus of reversing the direction of Kohr-Ah's march, but only if the Pkunk are still alive. After the Arilou, the next closest race will be the Pkunk. Even if the Pkunk are 3 days away from being absorbed by the Yehat, it is enough to send the Kohr-Ah after them instead of the Supox. The sequence then becomes Arilou, Pkunk, Yehat, Utwig, and Supox. The reversal of direction buys you another 2 months because now the Kohr-Ah have to traverse the sector diagonally twice. Covering the extra distance from the Supox to Sol takes them about 2 months.
EDIT: Looks like I screwed up the window dates initially. Now I have corrected the dates to March 14th - April 13th with Spathi slave-shielded, the later the better. With Spathi on the loose, you do not get the full 7 months because the Ilwrath come too close to Spathi space. The Kohr-Ah either go after the Ilwrath too early and skip the ZFP, or the Ilwrath move too far away from the Umgah and the Kohr-Ah go after the Arilou too early. If the Pkunk are dead, the Supox become the closest race to the Arilou and you lose the extra 2 months. In either of these cases, and even if you miss the Window of Perfection, you still get at least a 5 month extension.
I should mention that I experiment on v0.7.0-rc1. The dates may be slightly different on v0.6.2 due to a change in Hyperspace timing.
EDIT 2: So the Pkunk are still alive? Great, time their migration so that it begins just as the Kohr-Ah are arriving, and make the Kohr-Ah chase them for 6 months, for a net gain of 5 extra months and for a grand total of 1 year If they are migrating already, time your send-back communication so that they return home 3 months prior to beginning of January 2160.
And if you are really feeling lucky, send the Pkunk home just before they are absorbed by the Yehat while the Kohr-Ah are chasing them, making the Kohr-Ah chase them backwards for a gain of yet another 7 months that it takes the Pkunk to go home and the Kohr-Ah to later return to the Yehat. That should make the grand total 19 months! You need some luck because Pkunk's and Kohr-Ah's SOIs overlap at that point, and finding a Pkunk among the horde of Kohr-Ah may be difficult. In my experiment, I sent the Ilwrath off on Apr 12th, 2159 and contacted the Pkunk homeworld for the first time offering help on Jul 7th, 2159. They begin their migration 6 months after your offer to help, which was Jan 7th, 2160, just before the Kohr-Ah came. After a few attempts, I sent the Pkunk home on Jul 5th, 2160. The Kohr-Ah arrived at Earth on Jun 7th, 2161 instead of the usual Nov 19th, 2159. That is almost 19 months later. Of course, this is pretty artificial and difficult to time, but it is possible.
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« Last Edit: April 27, 2011, 02:13:45 am by fossil »
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Ahmed
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Nice advice for extending the deadline.
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Joss Rand
Zebranky food
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Cool!. I hope to try it one of these days.
BTW, when they wipe out Utwig and Yehat in your experiment?
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fossil
Core Team
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Another trick along the same lines found and can be used cumulatively with the Ilwrath. I've edited the original post with more info. To summarize, it is possible to delay Kohr-Ah's arrival at Earth by almost 19 months!
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