Resigning as official ambassador

[Kody]

I'm going to resign as ambassador.

I was originally going to resign as turn player, but nobody was willing to fill that gap.

PS: You've still got Tassadar as part of the hive government.

[Nubclear]

And whats wrong with that? I am god, you know.

[Rokossovky]

The Chairman has transfered the administration of foreign relations to the Central Military Commission.

- Marshal Rokossovky

[Snowflake]

What happened? Anybody care to explain?

[Kody]

Just all the real life work is catching up with me.

[Snowflake]

Oh ok. Good luck to your work. We all need to find the right balance.

/me went to check her own real life work.

[Jamski]

Aaagh - real life work

-Jam

[Vev]

Tis evil how reality brooks no respite for us cheery 'polyers.

[Kody]

I think I'll be resigning from the hive as well.

I know I said I'll try and make this a smooth transition, but other people's idea of a smooth transition would drive me insane. Basically I don't think I can bear to watch someone trying to learn everything while they're doing the turns.

My idea of a smooth transition was me teaching everything that I could by running through a couple of turns step by step with someone else. Then letting that person take over after they started getting it maybe 50% right. Then fine tuning their turn playing over another couple of turns. I offered about a month ago... anyway I don't have the time for that anymore.

The idea of me writing turn updates and letting someone else run the turn from those sounds like a good idea. It's just that I know from my simulator experience that a third of the mistakes I make in the simulator, can screw things up such that that we will lose more advantage than if the turn was played normally. While making the turn update, I know the critical mistakes that must be avoided, and someone just following instructions wouldn't.

Also writing turn updates actually gives a low gain for a large amount of time. The turns mostly gets improved by replaying of the turn 8-9 times, and the turn updates usually help me to remember to label landmarks and bases. However, it just felt wrong to not try and share the turn planning with everyone else, which is why I put up the turn updates.

Anyway this resignation shouldn't be a surprise, I was dropping hints over 2 months ago. I did a recruitment run to attract people that might be able to take over certain tasks. I gave a specific warning that I would be gone by the end of this month.

As for the Hive's future I hope for the best. However, I highly doubt the hive will mantain it's currently lead in the power graph. If you use Jamski's experience, Rokossovky's initative, and HongHu's diplomancy I think that you'll do well. Not half of 20 cities golden age boomed to size 7 in the next 12 years like I had planned out, but well enough.

It's a pity I never got around to formalising the nutrient strategy of our game, as the mineral stage is starting to end and there will be less and less advantage in using the mineral techniques I written about.

Stick with the drones though. Finding mistakes by the drones is a rarity, and they seem to know obscure little details that make a difference. Like last turn I found out from the drone infiltration that a mindworm will always attack a nearby base instead of a unit. With the drones on the hive's side there's a fairly good chance of victory. Unfortunately, I'm certain hive will start lagging behind the drones in development and it will be mainly the drones leading the way to victory.

In comparison the pirates keep making mistakes. Although I'm not sure whether that's their new turn player, or they're actually doing fairly well and I'm just pedantic.

Anyway, I need to leave the hive as I'll go insane seeing the turns and not intervening. When I joined the hive I never intended to play a single turn. But after taking one look at a turn, how could I not help. Try and see if you can recruit a SMAC/SMAX veteran or two to help Jamski out.

PS: Rokossovky you should have checked for coordinates this turn, Calico Island (55,43)

[Googlie]

Noooooooo Don't go, Kody. The drones need you. The drones look up to you .......

(or has the game become boring now that victory is all but guaranteed????)

G.

[Kody]

Victory guaranteed was another 20 turns from now after I had set up all the specalist cities. The gains from resource pulsing and the specialist tricks I had developed for the the next 20 years could actually outweigh what I have ever achieved with the last 20.

With me leaving victory becomes iffy again. Mainly because I don't think any of the other hive members have the patience to do the mircomanagement needed to compete with the veterans. In fact for all my hours of mircomanagement, Buster wasn't far behind in how well he ran his faction. Simply, because he knew more tricks than me. If buster had followed the same path as the hive of building up crawlers, and holding off building SPs, the drones would probably be in parity with the Hive.

My reasons for leaving is just real life stuff. I suppose I should explain to you too, the other hive members have found out from MSN, just they never felt like posting those MSN conversations.

Basically, I've spent far too much time on the ACDG, and my work has suffered. Recently my supervisor has been dropping me stronger and stronger hints that he's not happy with my work. Personally I think my supervisor has been very lenient, but I don't want to test his patience any further.

I was considering putting less time, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't stay inactive very long after seeing the next hive turn.

I'm not saying you guys are bad players, but ARGHH, some of you guys weren't even keeping up to date with the turns. And only Micha took up my offer to learn how I played turns before he went back to university.

Also there's seems to be a mistaken belief that you can learn what I'm doing, from me telling you what to do and then letting you post turn. That's like getting the solution to an engineering problem, and then looking over it and thinking you understand everything. Try working the same solution from scratch and you'll realise starting with the solution was completely the wrong place to start.

[Kody]

You guys better keep those golden age pop booms running in Rokossovkygrad and Central Planning.

Turn 2144 - Rokossovkygrad(size 4), Central Planning(size 4)
Turn 2145 - Rokossovkygrad(size 5), Central Planning(size 5)
Turn 2146 - Rokossovkygrad(size 6), Central Planning(size 6)
Turn 2147 - Rokossovkygrad(size 7), Central Planning(size 7)

If both Rokossovkygrad and Central Planning aren't both size 7 in turn 2147 then I'll be very annoyed. Because setting those booms up took me over 40 hours was done over 5 turns, and in my opinion they should be in the bag. I already know food and pysch are sufficient as I've played the turn ahead, you just have to be careful about allocating pysch and food.

Unless you really know how to golden age pop boom I suggest running it in the simulator as that's how I figured out how to get the pop booms to work properly. The pysch changes with whenever the city grows, so you need to allocate pysch for a size 5 city when the city is size 4.

[Snowflake]

Kody you will be dearly missed. But you know that.

[Googlie]

Ah, yes ... real life

there was a thread a while back "you know you're addicted to smac/x when ..... " and some answers were cute, but one was telling

"when I got fired from my job for spending too much office time on the game"

So true

(and I think I'm hard done by just having to juggle golf games and smac/civ3/galactic civ, etc.)

G.

[Micha]

Fare well, Kody. We´ll miss you :'(

Sorry for not finishing the training lessons, but we just live in completely opposite parts of the world, so it´s really hard to fit into your time schedule when university is keeping me busy for most part of the day...

I know we´ll see you later, since I doubt you can live without us

Good bye, Comrade!