Flexibility or Ecological Engineering

[Kody]

What do people think?

Jamski believe we should go for Ecological Engineering.

I haven't decided myself personally.

If we get Ecological Engineering it would drastically improve our tech rate and mineral productions.

If we get flexibility we can meet other factions. We don't really have anything worth trading to other factions unfortunately. So flexibility will be more useful for troop movement or stealing techs. This means there may be a backlash from the hive attacking other factions so early.

Getting earlier flex means we may be able to infiltrate other factions.

I'm not sure what the exact laws of probe warfare is when you don't have a treaty, pact or vendetta. Eg informal truce or "nothing"???

[Snowflake]

IIRC about the rules, if you perform any probe action other than infiltration to any faction without its preagreement, you must announce vedette.

I agree with Jamski that resource restriction lifting is more important if we want to carry out his massive expansion and production plan. We would need flexibility later when we get out troops together. Stealing techs again implies war and there's not much point of being in a war before we get a decent military force. Infiltration of course if good, but this only may not be enough to outweight the benefit of restriction lifting.

[Kody]

Well thanks for clearing that up.

I think I'm leaning towards restriction lifting.

However, early infiltration would be very useful as people don't usually build early probe defences (well not yet). And also having contact and infiltration of the other factions will help with roleplay and increase activity.

If we want to look from a purely game point of view, I would say lets just hide in a bunker and build like crazy.

Still we need a majority vote... with hopefully chairman backing. I think the chairman has other plans that is pending the release of rokossovky's white paper report.

[Kody]

The discussion can be seen here.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=95360

[Vev]

How apt to have the Hive adopt an isolationist policy. I find it would be nice if somehow the threads subject are dated as there seem to be quite a number of them and having a timestamp allows some sort of causuality to be determined.

[EZRhino]

Since we seem to be persuing a hybrid strategy, I would tend more towards eco. engineering. But getting doct:flexibility is also crucial. Perhaps as our next tech?

[Kody]

I might remind people that with some cooperation with the drones we are 3 techs away from ecological engineering, and 2 techs away from flexibility.

[Jamski]

Jamski believe we should go for Ecological Engineering.

So guess what I voted for...

I belive that without BIG production, we can't really USE the more millitary techs - a small scale attack or probe at this stage of the game will simply make us enemies. A large-scale attack later will KILL our enemies, making thier opinions of us rather redundant.

-Jam

[Kody]

The problem is researching along that tech path means we have to get social pysch, which increases our subsequent tech costs.

[Kody]

Unfortunately the drones don't finish ethical calculus, (which we do want), before we finish biogenetics.

Edit:
Sorry about the double post, I was just thinking some more.

[Jamski]

This is a real stinker of a situation. This is probably the biggest descision in the history of the Hive. What we decide now will impact upon the rest of the game so deeply....

Hmmm, we need both, so do we build up and get both ourselves, putting ourselves in a mighty strong position (or maybe getting left behind) Or do we take what we need from the Uni? By the time we get probe foils, the Uni should have Eco Eng for us to "borrow"

-Jam

[Kody]

So we're going to hold the turn I guess when our tech comes up, because I see really little dialogue happening on this issue.

[Jamski]

I have to say its probably quicker to research Flex, and then take Eco off the Uni, who'll definitely be wanting to get the restrictions lifted as soon as they can. Its more efficient then in number of turns, even considering it probably takes YEARS to even find the Uni.

However, the Uni will be pissed if we meet them, say "hi" and then download all their techs.

There's no "right" answer to this one. Against the Ai, I would probe without hesitation, and probably try and blame it on Miriam or someone, but the AI doesn't remember like humans. We'll be the evil tech-stealing-Hive for a long while, and we don't want to end up in a permanant 3 vs 2 vendetta.

-Jam

[Snowflake]

I'm sure this is internal affair of the Hive. But does the Drones have any input?

[Kody]

We're trying to first figure out a hive stance. Otherwise it's going to end up as a general debate. Also some hive members aren't comfortable talking in the drone's forum. So it's probably better to organise what our stance is here first.

If we're not worried about seeming like newbies I suppose we can ask them for help with our planning.