Drone Diplomatic Exchanges

[Drogue]

Maniac: Which VoyForum? I didn't know there was a Drones one

[Maniac]

There isn't. I asked in the Hive VoyForum if they could tell us what tech the drone stole, and what the further drone intentions towards PUT were.
Kody has already answered: he doesn't want to say what tech the drone stole. However fortunately I've already received a PM back from buster:

The guide was fine. I was not aware of this.

The probeaction got us environmental economics. On PUT the immediate plans only involves some techlifting.

Re the trade we will complete DAP in 2153 ourselves so the suggested trade will not work. Don't know what else you can come up with.

As such the only problem I have in handing you SFF or even DAP is the possibility you will be probed and the techs then spread all over - particularly to PUT. It is not that I am trying to stall you - I have no problem with tipping the war in your favor but the likely chance that the techs will get stolen and spread is a real concern. Peace btw is currently producing a foil probe at Liars Lair (slanted to complete in three) - earlier produced probeships were all killed I see. PUT has no probships and are constructing none, so for now all you need to ensure is that you have the probe coming out of Liars Lair covered.

Anyway - give me some kind of repayment-plan and some confidence the techs will not be shortly after stolen by Peace and we will work something out.

regards
buster

I think we can safely assure the Drones that no PEACE probe will ever come close to our bases. I'll tell them how we started the war earlier than planned especially to kill those Party Boats, how we have probe defences going to the war front and how we have cruisers whose main priority is killing any probe in sight.

But the problem of giving the drones sufficient repayment may be a more difficult matter. It seems he is willing to give us SFF and even D:AP! Any idea what we could offer in return? This phrase - "give me some kind of repayment-plan" - may indicate he is not interested in one of our techs, but only in cash. If so, how much would we be willing to offer per tech?

[Drogue]

For those techs, up to 150ec each, IMHO. I would try for say 50ec+a tech each. We could offer future tech, since we should start researching quicker, but other than that, I have no idea.

Them having Env Econ is not good though. Drones with tree farms, the WP and unlimited energy is a scary thought. I know in an SP game when I get Env Econ my research usually doubles overnight, especially when I have the WP, because of Boreholes.

[Impaler[WrG]]

150 seems a bit stingy to me, I would say up to 250.

If we build the PEG we could easily afford that much money if we briefly shoot our Econ up all the way for a turn or two CCHA CHINGG!! 150 Credits easy.

Once we have MMI and restriction lifting I am ok with slowing down a bit tecnologicaly and focusing on growth, the Drones will likly also slow down their reserch soon too and start building more.

We also have quite a few tecs that they might be interested in, any of which we could trade, Doc: Init, NLMath, Adaptive Econ (after we build PEG), and Pro-Pych.

Also lets ask about their relationship with the Hive, stuff like "you seem to be very close with the Hive as you have obviosly been tec trading with them alot. Do you intetend to achice Coop Victory with them". Put the ball in their court to say if they want to backstab the Hive.

[Maniac]

Can I send this PM?

***

Hi buster,

If PEACE is the only faction that could realistically probe us right now, I can assure you your technology will stay in our safe hands! We certainly realize the importance of preventing probes to reach and infiltrate our bases. In fact we started the war earlier than planned especially because of this. Our first plan was to start the war MY 2152, but after we learned PEACE was building Party Boats in Alexandria (Athena Anchorage) and Tripoli (Triplex), we moved the date to MY 2150, so we could eliminate all PEACE probe capacity in one quick blow.
Any PEACE probes that are built after this date have virtually no chance to come even close to our bases. We are moving our own probe defences and probe foil to the war front to prevent possible infiltration, we have four very mobile cruisers in the war theatre that can easily intercept any incoming probes, and if we see a base such as Liar's Lair starting construction of a probe, it moves right up the priority list of "bases to capture", meaning that most likely PEACE won't even get the chance to finish a probe.

So as far as I can see the only problem is the matter of repaying you. You used the phrase "give me some kind of repayment-plan". Does the word "repayment" mean you are only interested in cash in return, and not for example map data or technologies? If eg techs are fine too, I'm sure we can work out some deal including them as we have (or soon will have) techs such as NonlMath, Doc:Ini, AdapEcon, ProgPsych... I can't access the turn right now, but IIRC didn't you lack Biogen and Doc:Mob as well? Though I assume you already have an agreement with the Hive regarding those. Another possibility that involves trading tech would be that if you gave us both SFF & D:AP (as you indicated you would be willing to do), we could immediately switch our research to a technology of your choice. That would already repay one of the techs, so I hope.

If you only want cash though, we're currently discussing in the Consciousness what could be considered a reasonable compensation for a technology. In a pure tech trade it is mostly relatively easy as both parties win about the same thing (having to research one less tech) and no one loses anything. But purely repaying in credits is a different method of course, and a much less used one.

However we were wondering about the following philosophy. Giving someone a tech means making them an equal partner shareholder in the owning of a technology. In the case of SFF we assume you can and will trade to two other factions: us and the Hive. This means that three factions become co-owner. Thus - in order to become an equal shareholder - it would be logical for us to pay you back in credits one third of the cost in labs it took to research that tech. I guess this would mean somewhere around 200 credits.
Can you find yourself in this argumentation?

Greetings,

Mani Alpha-3
External Affairs Function of the Cybernetic Consciousness

[DeathByTheSword]

send ...but i dont think they will fall for the shareholders thingy

[Maniac]

The shareholder justification for the sum we offer doesn't matter of course, but do you think they would consider 200 credits <-> SFF sufficient compensation? If they ask more, we'll probably have lots of troubles to repay them anywhere in the near future, as we might need to do some military upgrades or hurrying of drone control facilities due to b-drones or switching to FM.

[Drogue]

Maniac: Nicely done. Personally send without the justification, but it is in character and correct. Arguments against it include the value of the tech. Every tech costs the same in research, but some are more valuble, like SFF. Also, the amount we pay isn't dependant on whether or not they trade it with the Hive, so they could ask 300 saying that whether they trade with the Hive isn't to do with us.

I would ask 200 flat out, at the end of your 3rd paragraph, and delete the 4th paragraph personally, like this:

Hi buster,

If PEACE is the only faction that could realistically probe us right now, I can assure you your technology will stay in our safe hands! We certainly realize the importance of preventing probes to reach and infiltrate our bases. In fact we started the war earlier than planned especially because of this. Our first plan was to start the war MY 2152, but after we learned PEACE was building Party Boats in Alexandria (Athena Anchorage) and Tripoli (Triplex), we moved the date to MY 2150, so we could eliminate all PEACE probe capacity in one quick blow.
Any PEACE probes that are built after this date have virtually no chance to come even close to our bases. We are moving our own probe defences and probe foil to the war front to prevent possible infiltration, we have four very mobile cruisers in the war theatre that can easily intercept any incoming probes, and if we see a base such as Liar's Lair starting construction of a probe, it moves right up the priority list of "bases to capture", meaning that most likely PEACE won't even get the chance to finish a probe.

So as far as I can see the only problem is the matter of repaying you. You used the phrase "give me some kind of repayment-plan". Does the word "repayment" mean you are only interested in cash in return, and not for example map data or technologies? If eg techs are fine too, I'm sure we can work out some deal including them as we have (or soon will have) techs such as NonlMath, Doc:Ini, AdapEcon, ProgPsych... I can't access the turn right now, but IIRC didn't you lack Biogen and Doc:Mob as well? Though I assume you already have an agreement with the Hive regarding those. Another possibility that involves trading tech would be that if you gave us both SFF & D:AP (as you indicated you would be willing to do), we could immediately switch our research to a technology of your choice. That would already repay one of the techs, so I hope.

If you only want cash though, we're currently discussing in the Consciousness what could be considered a reasonable compensation for a technology. In a pure tech trade it is mostly relatively easy as both parties win about the same thing (having to research one less tech) and no one loses anything. But purely repaying in credits is a different method of course, and a much less used one. We would rather trade using techs, but we are prepared to offer 200ec for SFF and another 200ec for D:AP.

Greetings,

Mani Alpha-3
External Affairs Function of the Cybernetic Consciousness

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Drogue
Maniac: Nicely done. Personally send without the justification, but it is in character and correct. Arguments against it include the value of the tech.

Indeed, but that is offset by the fact that we can gain SFF ourselves in three years.

Also, the amount we pay isn't dependant on whether or not they trade it with the Hive, so they could ask 300 saying that whether they trade with the Hive isn't to do with us.

If they do that, I'll start another line of argumentation, saying that if we research SFF ourselves and have the full property rights, we can trade the tech to the Hive and PUT in exchange for one tech each. This means we would win our own SFF research investment cost back more than three times. As a consequence, as we can't sell SFF further if we buy it from the drones, for us for it to be profitable to buy the tech instead of research it, the price we pay them should be less than one third of the cost it takes us to research SFF. So with 200 credits we're actually already paying more than we economically speaking should.

but we are prepared to offer 200ec for SFF and another 200ec for D:AP.

I'd wait a little with offering credits for D:AP until we have SFF. If we offer a price now, they could ask more, claiming that without them it would take us many more years to research D:AP. If we first get SFF and switch to D:AP, they can't use that argument anymore.
Also, shouldn't we first hear how they like the proposal of they giving us D:AP and us then switching to research the tech of their choice? If they accept that, we won't have to give away our valuable credits.

[Maniac]

I sent the PM a few hours ago with this last paragraph:

If you only want cash though, we're currently discussing in the Consciousness what could be considered a reasonable compensation for a technology. In a pure tech trade it is mostly relatively easy as both parties win about the same thing (having to research one less tech) and no one loses anything. But purely repaying in credits is a different and more difficult matter - and a much less used one - because one faction loses something.
However after much programming we have managed to develop an algorithm comparing the costs and benefits of researching versus buying Synthetic Fossil Fuels. The results are in now, and based on our scientific study we offer you a price of 200 credits for the technology of Synthetic Fossil Fuels, at least if you're not interested in a tech-for-tech trade.
Can you find yourself in such a deal?

[Drogue]

Sounds good I see your point about the price now

[Maniac]

What I feared a couple of weeks ago has probably happened.

We signed an agreement with the Drones stating not to trade HEC to any other faction until a third faction discovered HEC as well. However later I realized they could circumvent this deal by giving prototypes to the Hive instead of the tech itself. It would break the spirit of the agreement, but not the letter.

This year I noticed from the F7 Military Nexus that the Hive got a plasma unit. As the Hive doesn't have HEC, most likely they got it from the drones.

[DeathByTheSword]

"hmz...cant we do something like this with the UNI...this way we dont need to discover certain techs..

[Impaler[WrG]]

Turn around is fair play, I say when we get SFF from the Drones we Protoype trade missle Weapons to the University for some tec we need (NuralG or Env Econ). If the Drones complain then we point out what they have done with the HIVE and call them hipocrites.

[Drogue]

I'm with Impaler. We can do the same with plasma and SFF (if we get it). Got for Plasma, Missile and Cruiser for Eco Eng and Env Econ, IMHO. But they will need the tech of SFF for the leafrog