General diplomacy and trading Doc flex

[Hercules]

I would like to tie the trading of Comm limks into support for Plan Gov, when we reach the candidate status.
Re PUT lets think.

We expect to get ethical Calc via the Cycon. So what else can the PUT offer.

[Hercules]

Let's try and work out the ramifications of some of our possible actions.
First re Doc:Flex.

Have Doc: Flex

Roze
Miriam
Pirates

Next likely: Cycon. More or less agreed tech trade but we are trying to delay timing of trade. We get new tech in exchange (possibly Eth Calc- but note PUT message).

Roze might trade to others but we think she is only in contact with Cycon and Miriam.

PUT As they have mobility they could well be close to discovering Doc: Flex. On the otherhand they may well expect to trade with us for Ethic Calc plus

When we talk of trading Doc: Flex, it inevitably means other factions will meet with each other. So we have to judge when to sell our comm links

Comm Links

Hive: no known contact with any faction but Drones.
Drones: Only known contact is with Hive but suspected contact with PUT.

We the pirates hope to establish contact with the Drones in 2/3 turns. We will be the only faction with all Comm links.

As soon as we start trading the comm links, so we lose our priveleged trading position.. But it is going to happen in time of course.

When we trade Doc: Flex to the Cycon and to the PUT, they are going to meet within 5/6 years, estimate, maybe sooner. We need to trade to both simultaneously. We can seek trade restriction.

Trading Comm links poses problems for us. It is impossible for us to police once we release the comm links.

The chain.
Hive have contact with Drones.
Drones we suspect have contact with PUT(based on speed to Ind Auto)
Cycon have contact with us ( Pirates), Roze and Miriam
We have contact with Roze, Miriam, Cycon, Hive,and PUT.

If we pass Cycon contact to Hive or PUT at this moment it will transferred like hot cakes. In fact we could lose the initiative because the other comms could be traded and we would lose the middleman status. So obviously we are hesitant and rightly so. The Hive and the Cycon, quite far apart on the planet would have contact earlier than would have been the case.

However when we trade Doc:Flex to the Cycon and PUT, they will each meet each other quite quickly (5/6Years at earliest) and then with comm link trading every faction could quite quickly be in contact with everyone else.


Now that everyone knows that we have links to the Cycon and the Hive we are going to come under some pressure.

Some questions:
Do we try to tie in the Comm links to :

Tech trade restrictions
Votes?
PACT?

tech
tech and ecs
tech and votes
ecs
ecs and votes
tech ecs and votes
each and all

and when?

My preferred locked in transfer (of Doc: Flex) is when we discover Doc:Init in 2/3 years.

I would amenable to receiving Ethical Calc and vote commitment from PUT for Doc: Flex. The trade Doc: Flex to everyone we are in contact with ,with restrictions so that Drones don't get it except by research or from us.

Re Comm links I feel the more the Drones are isolated from the other factions the better, until such time as Plan Gov elections.

This is a bit jumbled but I am trying to work things through.

For instance: How will this impact upon our strategy of invading Rozeland when we have the weapons tech. Might other factions have similar ambitions, when they have Doc: Flex (I know we have the better maps).

[johndmuller]

First - Re the question of whether or not the EG is available - It HAS been Disabled - so noone will be getting it. There is still a possibility of getting an occasional commlink via a pod, but that seems to be rather rare, so not much worth worring about.

As for Cap'n Herc's analysis, it seems to cover the bases and to be pretty well thought out. I'm not so sure that the PUT and Borgs will meet as soon as Callico thinks, after getting Doc:Flex, as they do have to build the ship and sail it somewhere, but maybe in the ballpark of 10 years instead of 5 or 6.

Someone has the Unity Crash Site in their territory, which at least sometimes, and I assume all the time, gives them the locations of all the factions HQ's on their maps. That will help the bearer zero in on other factions once getting the wherewithall. Has anyone any notion of who might have it? Miriam had a chopper, so it could be her (a chopper often comes with it too).

As for getting elected to the Governorship, I think that highly unlikely, as I don't think that we have a good chance of getting on the ballot in the near term because of the AI's leads, and the other factions can all grow faster than us, making it harder in the long run. That said, we are keeping up with the other humans right now, so with a little luck, we might get the numbers up at the right time if at least one of the AI has been somehow weakened enough to get off the top 2. With our current vote total of 15, we are now in 4th place, 10 votes off the ballot - the others have - Hive: 16; PUT: 12; Miriam: 24; Cycon: 14; Drones: 11; Roze: 26 - on a positive note, only the Hive is ahead of us w/r human facitons and only by 1 vote. Nevertheless, if we were the only humans on the ballot, it would be easy for all or at least enough of the humans to vote for the AI candidate since they would not be particularly feared by the other human factions. We do have the advaantage (or will, once we contact the Drones) that we will be able to call the election when we want, so that if we find ourselves eligible for the ballot, we can call it right then.

I believce we still have some time to go with our sea monopoly, but I think we need to keep an eye on the Cycon, as they could theoretically get it independently from the AI - thus we should be reasonably accomodating to them when they start to get impatient or when they get close to finishing it themselves NLT 2143, but probably sooner. As to the others, I still think retrade stipulations are reasonable to impose on the recitients of Doc:Flex, so when the time comes, we should include that clause in most of the trades. Ditto for the ability to get the MMC, although I don't think we should pay too much for that excllusive, since other people probably don't want it so badly anyway. Remeember, once we get Doc:Init, all our warships get the Marine attribute, allowing us to capture some ships we defeat (to 50% or less), which might be daunting to would-be sea enemies - plus, as we all know, sea power is not so great compared to air power anyway.

Once again I would like to remind the Cap'ns that WE NEED TO BUILD DEFENSIVE PROBES SOMETIME, and preferably at Command Centers, so let's try to work that into the production 'schedule' .