Alkari are one of the many races MoO II inherited from MoO I. They are birdlike creatures who excel at piloting ships and hate catlike Mrrshans. In MoO I they had +3 to ship defense (roughly +30% to evade beams and missiles) and 40% discount to propulsion technologies, meaning they could improve ship speed, range and evasion faster.
In MoO II they have "+50 ship defense" and "artifacts homeworld" perks and "dictatorship" government. Ship defense bonus is large, +50 points to beam evasion and hidden +25 to missile evasion. It's basically inertia stabilizer without turning speed improvement. The bonus is not very useful early on when everybody use missiles and you don't have more defensive technologies. It's also no help versus space monsters since most of them have weapons that always hit. Once you get equipment for competent beam ship, the bonus will help you a lot. Paired with ECM jammer and trained (regular crew) it yields 102 missile evasion vs normal missiles and 67 evasion vs ECCM missiles which translates to 9.5% and 32% chance to be hit with no scanner and 73% with neutron scanner. Add inertia stabilizer to the mix and chances fall down to 3.4%, 14% and 48% respectively. Not bad considering it's usually hard to evade missiles. Evading beams is much easier, with this bonus and inertia stabilizer all ships would have at least 140 beam evasion and small ships with veteran and elite crew would be over 200 making them impossible to hit with beams without serious dedication to accuracy which AI doesn't do. Artifacts homeworld perk is there to get you faster to the mid game. It gives +2 research points per scientist on the homeworld only, that's 8 extra points on turn 1. With it getting research laboratory tech takes 8-9 turns less, about 5 turns less to get automated factory and almost 20 turns less to get planetary supercomputer. Great time saver early on and extra time can be used to either maintain technological lead or expand. Dictatorship is default government type in MoO II, colonies has to have barracks to mitigate 20% morale penalty and spy defense is increased by +10 points. Advanced form of dictatorship, imperium removes "no barracks" penalty while keeping +20% morale bonus from barracks, raises spy defense bonus to +20 and most importantly increases command points by 50%. Command point bonus is big deal, depending on the stage of the game you'll be spending 60% - 80% of command points on ships protecting owned systems. 50% more command points means your attack fleet could be twice or four times larger without having to pay maintenance fee. And that is recurring theme in the Master of Orion II, almost nothing is plain.
My starting location was near the center of the map (see the galaxy map below, Altair is my homeworld but as MoO player you already know that :)) so I've found Orion system and made contact with other races very early. First race I've found were Klackons at the bottom left corner but due to absolutely no suitable unguarded planet to colonize near starting system I was weak economically and it took some time to establish trade agreement with them. Trading techs certainly helped there. What didn't help was failed attempt to kill space eel guarding Yifne system. There were two large planets with decent climate and one was ultra rich. For some reason I though interceptors are going to synergize well with defense bonus and attacked the eel with two destroyers, each with one interceptor squadron. The eels have plasma flux weapon (stronger version of pulsar, area of effect weapon, always hits) and lightning field special (50% chance to destroy incoming missiles, torpedoes and fighters) which made it really well defended against early weapons, especially interceptors. Fortunately both ships successfully retreated and since I haven't had economy to make a swarm of missile ships I've abandoned the campaign for the time being. So I've tried my luck at the other end of Urna wormhole and hit the jackpot. There was Oshi system with large arid planet. I've made an outpost at Urna system and escorted colony ship with one of carrier destroyers to Oshi. Oh boy, I had reasons for military escort, it was on the other side of the galaxy and near the Mrrshan homeworld. It was only matter of time before they attacked. But before that I've made contact with Humans and started trading shortly after. My economy was good, research was getting even faster and trade got me couple of interesting techs, fusion bomb, missile base, mass driver and deuterium fuel cells. That made me free to research other techs in the same fields, most importantly class I shields and tritanium armor. By that time I've researched planetary supercomputer and soil enrichment on my own. When Mrrshans attacked I still had interceptors on my destroyer defending Oshi. I managed to destroy most of attacking fleet except the last ship. Thing is this game likes to round down numbers, if a squadron of 4 fighter loses a single member, it won't relaunch after returning to carrier. Since I had only one squadron per carrier it meant the carrier was useless after interceptors returned. I lost Oshi to ground invasion but as it turned out it was only minor setback. I've refitted remaining destroyer with autofire lasers, built another one plus a troop ship and liberated Oshi with them. No buildings and population was harmed in the process so I could continue where I've left of. The moment I've showed up in their Derke system (I've built one more destroyer so I can defend Oshi and attack with two ships) they requested peace and gave me 10% tribute. I've accepted it, ordered my fleet to return and demanded fusion drive, a technology I've hoped to gain during the war. To my surprise they agreed.
Then for some reason Humans declared war on me. There were few skirmishes at Urna system, I've lost an outpost, they lost half a dozen destroyers and almost as much frigates, I attacked their colony but didn't have enough bombs to destroy fighter garrison, made even bigger fleet, sent it to Urna, they got scared, asked for peace, gave me tachyon communication technology and all was good. Klackons declared war on me too, somebody framed me for espionage. Truth, I had decent number of spies but I was sending them to steal from Humans during the war and was honorable to those I was at peace with. After losing two battleships at Oshi they didn't make any more attacks. The reason was Antaran intrusion, they repeatedly attacked their colonies and destroyed their economy. Finally there was some period of peace. That gave me time to make few extra warships, a colony ship, kill space eel and colonize sweet Yifne system. Then Antarans attacked me at Altair. It was intense battle, I had a star base, fighter garrison, missile base and radiation shield on the planet and four destroyers armed with two autofire mass drivers (tritanium armor, fusion drive, electronic computer, class I shield, battle pods, battle scanner, inertia stabilizer and ECM jammer). They had four frigates and two destroyers. I barely survived, as I was destroying them one by one they had less and less cannons to shoot down nuclear missiles from planet, I've lost all ships and the star base but they were good distraction (ship defense bonus helped a lot) while nukes were doing the real damage.
Guess who made an audience with me then. Mrrshans! They asked for 5% tribute, I said no and got myself another war. Reason for rejection this time was my economy relied on every penny because I've lost trade agreement with Humans and Klackons and I was really looking forward to build up new colonies. Mrrshans reasoning was that I was weak after Antaran attack because I lost two thirds of my fleet. What they didn't take into account was that my fleet was made of powerful destroyers. The thing with destroyers is they can be built anywhere (bigger ships require star base) and on well developed colony it only takes two turns to build one. War was usual one, they attacked Oshi, lost a battle, brooded for a while and asked for peace when I positioned my fleet for an attack. At least my spies stole the merculite missile tech in the process. There was peace again, much longer then the last time. I've researched terraforming and started to colonize all the barren planets in vicinity, Herschel system, smaller planet in already colonized systems and Weg system near Klackons. I also colonized radiated planet in Urna system, Humans for some reason took toxic one. Then Galactic Council elections started. At the first few elections Klackons and Humans were candidates but after Antarans decimated Klackons and I expanded a little, I was there against Humans. By that time I've seen enough of Alkari, rapid early research, almost impossible to hit ships and Mrrshan opinion of them so I've decided to end the game through Galactic Council if the opportunity presents it self. So I started advancing construction field all the way up to advanced city building technology and taking planet construction in the process. My economy was thriving, military was strong in both quantity and quality. I moved from mass drivers to neutron blasters, upgraded shields to class III and armor to zortium.
I continued to arm myself expecting another war, building cruisers and upgrading them, swapped neutron blasters for graviton beams, fusion bombs with antimater ones, upgraded shields to class V and added hard shields in case of Antarans. In the mean time I expanded myself in the nebula colonizing Rotan and Grus and worked to improve relationship with other races. Klackons were still angry with me for espionage I have not done but eventually they accepted a non-aggression pact which improved relation enough to establish trade and research agreements which in turn improved relations even more. Mrrshans were a bit more agreeable to trade with me. Few elections passed and everyone voted for Humans. Since they together had less votes then me alone, no leader was elected. My fleet grew large and powerful enough to consider conquering Orion system. As I was refitting my older cruisers and preparing colony ship, Antarans appeared on the map, two cruisers 5 turns away from Altair. Not a big threat but nice opportunity to get some endgame techologies. I postponed my Orion campaign and started to build "assimilator" ships, battleships armed with assault shuttles and limited defenses, designed to capture ships. I calculated there would be three assimiltors when Antarans attack but then suddenly I won the game, two turns before battle with Antarans. There was Galactic Councile election and Klackons voted for me, though I think I would have won election anyway at that point.
Yeah I won! Still I was curious how many Antaran ships I could have captured and which technologies I would get from them and Orion. Loaded game few turns prior victory, refused to vote in Galactic Council, fought Antarans and successfully captured one cruiser, other self-destructed on capture. Scraping Antaran ship gave me particle beam and neutron bomb technologies. Then I've sent 10 cruisers to attack Guardian and won losing 4 ships. Orion gave me death rey, xentorium armor, reflection field and spatial compressor technologies.
All in on all it was a great game, challenging starting position, good AI interaction, interesting battles, nothing got too broken. And Alkari have demonstarted their strengths and weaknesses.
