Turns 2131 through 2140

[Hercules]

Hi Maties,

Not a lot to report this turn so far.

I did mention we got Energy bank at Pamplona didn't I. Still no Drones
but PMS Revenge beside pod for pop next turn.
PMS Santiago about to sail round samll island in the north.
PB Shark scents Miriam base at 74,84?
PMS King Lear I am afraid is enjoying the hospitality in the Hive
waters. These pirates have not seen female company for some time and it
would appear, neither have some Hive members.
PMS Farragut might start return journey via different route or swap
missions with King Lear.

Intend to rush crawler at L'l Accident. The HMB Island is cursed I tell
you. I misread tile and sent former to 35,67 instead of 35,69.

Rover now onboard PMSBootycheck and waiting col pod next turn (intend to
rush). Will drop rover off on Bull Is, pick up former and rover can
cross Bull Is for pick up later to land mass north of Sea Lurk and via
pod on single Island tile

Btw a Sea former has just finished solar near Alexandria. There is a pod
next to it at 62,70. What do you think should we pop it with the sea
former? hoping for clone.

Former on Bird Is now moved to 59,61. Transport from Rita now en route
to Alex to collect Col Pod. to deliver to 55,75.

Roze now producing first coastal craft.

That energy bank seems to have pushed us to within one year of Doc.
Init. Borg are 8 years from their next tech.

Anyhow not a complicated turn, some rushes likely but not EB at Tripoli
(though tempting to prepare for another crawler and then SP, MCC).

Views, comments what 8 hours from now. Borg seems in a bit of a muddle
which gives us another year to forestall Doc:Flex. Hive didn't offer
Treaty, which I thought they would pending negotiations.

Re some answers to above. The Liar' sea former was en route to the tile. It has now reached it. The former on bird was enroute to 59, 61. It's there now.

HMB Island is cursed.

[johndmuller]

Miriam Base at (74,84)? Is your screen again showing more than mine? The base-border lines that I see are seemingly due to Aurora and Word of God. Additionally, there is a fragment visible to me on the SE side of (79,80), but not the SE side of (77,81), which suggests a base at (82,82), I think - although I sometimes screw up on those base placement deductions. If there was a base at (74,84), I think that the lines atop (74,80) would be joined by lines on the other two sides and that there would be one also on the NE of (75,81), not to mention the ones that would be on our side of the landmass including to the SE & SW of our ship. If you see all of that stuff and I don't, there must be serious differences in our program versions or something. It may turn out that the landmass that Shark is next to is another island that we may wish to settle instead of an extension of Miriam's continent.

The Revenge could still do a little extra exploring and still end up next to the pod.

"Intend to rush crawler at L'l Accident. " - I thought yesterdays new policy was that we were going to rush facilitiies rather than units? Is today's new policy to reward the glorious &*^$^#in' incompetence of the terraforming chief there by giving them extra money to build units (they'll probably use the money to research Doctrine: Deforestation with it). The idea was to have a farm at (35,69) and to crawl nuts from it to build up the population; now we'll be crawling mins from (36,68) - are we in a hurry for that? Aside from turn advantage, which seems destined to be wasted by the ^^$%^&ing &*(&&XX%@#s there, what would we be buying? Or have you plotted out the progress of a future RecComm project there and deemed it necessary?As to developing (35,67), please note that it is only elevation 10, and is thus risky business to do major work on (although it would be a good tile to BoreHole-Raise when we are controlling RozeLand if we can do it before an ecomonster starts churning out unregulated min production pollution).

Good plan for the rover (thanks for spelling it out), although we will probably need another BootyBoat for the western provinces if that one is going a viking. Fine to pop the pod on the one-tile island at (49,51), but it might be good to refrain from popping pod at (53,49) on the unnamed north of Sealurk Island until after we put a base next to it - to ensure good stuff, although that rover is reasonably tough, compared to our other mil units. BTW, it would be nice to monolith-upgrade it somewhere in its travels.

Rushing CP at Liar's is OK with me the above notwithstanding. (It costs only 2 PoE/min at the moment, just as good as a facility). Former at Bull Island is also nicely synchronized with Booty Boat schedule so that we won't have to waste any time or mp's.

Again notwithstanding the above, if you rush 2 mins at Rita for 5 PoE, that will make a carryforward of 4 to next turn, which added to the 6 we will produce next turn will get us to the 10 min level, allowing us to rush more ecomomically in subsequent turns if we are building a fac or something we want badly. I think a Crawler was supposedly next on the list there, followed perhaps by a partyboat.

Feel free to invest some PoE's at Tripoli, say 12 or 32 - to even out the row, for want of a better criterion; then we could finish it off next time if we wanted..

I asked about Liar's Seaformer, because the last I saw it - it was just 1 tile away from there and we usually get 4 tiles of movement out of a Seaformer in regular seas. Taking 2 turns to go 2 tiles seems worth a better explanation than 'being en route to the tile'. It seemed that it might have been interrupted in the middle of terraforming the original tile, and I wondered what the story was if that was the case (why stop whatever it was doing or why start terraforming and then tell it to move?).

Popping the sea pod near Alex is pretty risky as we have no military to speak of to deal with a possible MW aboard a possible IoD which would as likely head toward us as toward the Borg an MW. At least if we were popping it with a BootyBoat, there would be a lower chance of getting an IoD, but I am not suggesting that either. Eventually we will have another warship around the homeland - apply some of the patience we all use to deal with the terraforming. Suggest that we move the seaformer quietly to the tile next door at (58,70) and put a tidal harness there

Suggest you build a sensor with the former at (56,72) as it can cover both Alex and the new base you say you are putting at (55,75). After that, it would seem sensible to do Forest-Road at both (55,73) and (57,71) in whatever order - depending on where the next LandFormer was going to be built.

Energy Banks don't improve labs, so change in research prospects would have to come from something else, like terraforming or additional workers.

See no reason why we shouldn't offer the Hive a treaty - see if you can get Cap'n/Ambas'dor Flubber's OK, if he doesn't chime in, then whatever.

Plant Kelp at (55,53) then to remaining nut special @(51.55) for kelp/solar treatment.

Still suggesting Former for Pamplona; see that you are already doing it.

Remember (defensive) Infantry Probes.

Remember imminent B-Drones coming soon perhaps as early as with the next base.

[Hercules]

Ok Some discussion. Sea Colony Pod from Sea Lurk due for completion very soon.

Cuspidore is in favour of site near Treasure Islet and I tend to favour site identified as second sea base site, further south.

The advantages of the 49,65, is that its closer, but it would have to share limited min resources with Liar's Lair, unless it specialises: great scope for tidal harnessess though.

The advantages of the southern site is, access to NUT specials and as a gateway to opening up the southern ocean as per Cap'n Flubber's strategy. Disadvantage is it will take longer to get there; maybe an additional 2/3 turns.

[Hercules]

So these B Drones are coming soon at a base near us. What's our best strategy for dealing this. Wasn't there something recently in the general help forum.

At least with Doc:Init we get a cruiser chassis.

[Makahlua]

I'm in favor of seabase site #2 in the south as well - matter of fact wasn't that decided a few turns back? I really want to see us expand south some so we only have 3 directions to worry about attacks from (heh). No idea about the B Drones tho :/

[johndmuller]

Hey, I like Seabase site #2 too (after all, I'm the one who put it on the map), it's just that it will take 5 turns to build the base there (the closer site near Treasure Islet gets it built on the 2nd turn). The original plan was to send the Sea former up there in the NW, but then it seemed like a good idea to build another CP at Liar's since we would otherwise have a drone control shortage there, so the Treasure Island site seemed like the best idea at the time. The overlap isn't that bad, especially if you think about all the hotshots building bases just a couple of tiles apart (at least talking about doing that, I haven't actually seen much of it in PBEMS).

Anyway, I'm not going to press that site if noone else likes it - we'll get around to something in that area eventually - it is close to HQ, so efficiency will be good).

How about this plan:
-The Sea Colony will be ready in 2139 without hurrying it along.
-Cap'n Herc's voyage from Liar's to the NW with the various units can be at (48,52) or (49,53) with the rover or (47,47), (48,48) or(49,49) if it leaves the rover on Bull Island temporarily.
-The SeaColony, if it went NNW could go to (52,50) at that same time (2139)
-The next turn, if the Booty Boat had followed the (48,48) +or- option without the rover, it could move 3 more tiles to the NW, exposing a lot of that currently empty space. If we liked what was there, we could plant the Colony over there somewhere, perhaps with a portion of its territory on the island there, and if we didn't, we could plant the colony at (48,52) on that turn same turn (the same 2 turn time frame as would have been for the Treasure Islet annex site) - the (48,52) site is not loaded with bonus tiles, but it is strategically located at least, connecting all those islets, and if a base were there when we popped the pod at (49,51) it might force the 'good' result like a monolith special or even an earthquake (I'm not sure if that works with a sea base an a land pod, but I don't think land pods generate sea baddies either though, so there wouldn't be any direct risk at least, and the "good" pop thing may actually apply anyway. Even with all these nice things I've been saying about (48,52), I'd still be hoping that something better turned up in the newly explored territory.

So please consider that plan instead of either Seabase site #2 or the Treasure Islet annex. With all the Nuts we'll be producing at Atlantis, I'm sure we can get to Seabase Site #2 (or land tile equivalent nearby like (49,75), given a little defungus action, or else (50,74) and/or someplace on or SW of Pitcairn Islet).

We do have plenty of time on this issue since we already have a RecComm there and we should be planning on another garrison, which would cover a pop of 4 (or 3 even with a b-drone hit).

As to the b-drones, IIRC in the forthcoming phase 1 of b-drones, you don't get them all the time and they may occur at the new base and/or 1 may appear at an existing base, so for each new base we may create 0, 1 or 2 b-drones, and if it is 2, only 1 will be in an existing base. Since we are not running Demo, we can always build a scout with our initial 10 mins in a new base, giving us time to get a Rec Comm together. Our SeaBases could generally handle an extra drone (especially if we made a crawler or trawler to replace the wasted nuts, but it would be much better if we could get up to pop 5 so that our specialist could be producing something instead of having to be a doctor (we might need a 10% psych allocation to tide us over if the b-drones get us down too much). The biggest problems I see are in our land bases, especially those ones on Boot - it would be bad luck to get one there, especially before we get a crawler going.

[Hercules]

Hiya maties,

Mid turn 2136 I have played just a few moves so far. So lots still to move and do.

Some good news and some surprising news.

First we have met with the Drones. They don't know it yet: and we met them where we didn't expect, at 3,45. We met
their unity foil. So have a good look around. Also look at the boundary lines up near where we met the Hive. This may alter
our views on where they and the Hive are.

Techs they are missing are Doc: Mob. Flex, Init, Prog Psych, They have Hive Comm Frequency but missing PUT, Roze,
Miriam, Cycon.

Second, Cycon, didn't try or had no success with the AI

Third, We discovered Doc: Init and are now researching Adaptive Economics.

Fourth, The Hive have just completed two SPs (The HGP and the PTS) and have shot up the power charts.

There is a pod to pop, with the PMS Revenge and the nearest base is Sea Lurk, but I would like to rush complete Sea
Colony pod at Sea Lurk.

I also would like to rush the EB at Tripoli.

PMS Tiger Shark revealed some more ocean but got stuck in some fungus.

So additional comments welcome on new developments. The two HIVE SP completions should send shock waves
around the globe.

[Hercules]

Oh and responses within what 12 hours from now.

[Makahlua]

Wow, how did the hive do that??

I guess we better get started on the MCC soon, then - are we going to be able to build trawlers to help accelerate it any? Or even ship land crawlers by BootyBoat? Both rushes sound good to me, how's our treasury holding up?

[Hercules]

It's a unity craft, probably given to them at the start. They don't have Doc: Flex yet.

I am giving everyone a bit more time on account of Hurricane Isabel may have caused interruptions to electricity supplies.

[johndmuller]

Don't have much time for a response at the moment, more later if not too late.

All interesting about the Drones; does that mean that the vast undiscovered area directly north of out homeland is unpopulated? I could also mean that the Hive and Drone boundaries near the King Lear are not necessarily both from their respective main landmasses, one or both could be from a distant colonial outpost. In any event, I would think a treaty offer would be in order and whatever trade overtures Fllubber might want to make - I believe that the Revenge took on some Borg slaves advisors when it visited Pi Square, perhaps they would fetch a pretty price (I understand there is a big marked in Drone slaves workers down south). Maybe we wish to discourage their exploration in this direction too.

Re poid and Sealurk - I don't care if you pop the pod or not, but I am not in favor of rushing the sea colony pod. Did you respond to my 3rd plan regarding that pod and the Liar's bootyboat or are you just ignoring suggestions and keeping your own plans close to the vest - I didn't think the issue of where it was going was settled - I don't know why you are in a hurry to rush it (we have enough drone control and a 3rd good tile to work at the moment), care to explain? If you have to rush a unit, consider the Crawler at Little Stupid Terraformin Accident (although that could wait a turn too).

OK with me if you wish to rush most of the rest of the EBank (14mins for 28 PofE) at Tripoli. What's next - are we thinking of a Command Center (to build InfProbes)?, a NetNode (in futile attempt to keep up with research costs), a PartyBoat? I am not in favor of starting an SP there as it could tie up our most productive base interminibly if we get bounced from SP to more expensive SP by the superior industry of the Hive and Drones (it could support an SP at some other base just as easily by building Crawlers or Trawlers and would maintain its flexibility); I am also unsure if I would want the MCC at the cost of not doing the PEG - I don't think it reasonable to expect to get 2 SPs (I'm not even that sure about 1).

Building a RecCom at Liar's? at Alexandria too?

[Hercules]

PMS Revenge popped the pod, with the result that we completed our sea
colony pod at Sea Lurk. (I wanted to rush it so that the pod would pop something else or a goodie at another base.What happens when you pop a pod and the nearest base is at Stockpile. Is there a pattern? IOD perhaps

Energy Bank rushed at Tripoli and supply crawler also at L'il Accident.

Transport from Rita moving to Liar's Lair for some transport duties regarding shifting crawlers

PMS Santiago stormed through sea fungus to more open water

Now three colony pods in transit next turn but only the CP from
Alexandria ready for immediate base founding.

This should now be an interesting diplomacy period.

So Flubber over to you to open negotiations or whatever with Drones. I have offered treaty.

Maybe a new thread for the Drones.

Re the sea colony pod. Well yes I thought the exploring for a base around NNW Denland was a good idea. It will just be a bit quicker than we thought.

I am in favour of starting the MCC but it doesn't have to be at Tripoli and Yes we could useTripoli to mass produce crawlers and probes. So where? At Rita, Alex or HMB, other? And we can build them, because we're the only ones with Doc:Init and we will have a head start.

[Flubber]

I am against starting an SP as an SP for the reasons the cuspidore pointed out-- If we miss it we could have a lot of wasted minerals. Aren't crawler upgrades allowed in this game ? If so, I say build two crawlers in the SP base and then upgrade and cash them. THis could perhaps be times with a short stint in PLanned to reduce costs ( I say perhaps because we would have to assess the effieciency cost against the reduced cost of rishing and the bit of additional growth. The 80 ec to switch and swutch back later might not be worthwhile)

[Hercules]

Yeah I can go with the crawler upgrade approach.

[johndmuller]

Do we have anything to upgrade them to?