2149: Pre-planning discussion and build/movement orders

[Googlie]

A question re the SP's

Given the instabuild feature of having 2 speeder trance synthcrawlers (for the MCC) how about the following for the Command Nexus:

Use the current synthcrawler, and then 1 of the AA's. Move the worker from the 4 mienral mine to the 7 mineral mine. That leaves 51 minerals needed to complete.

Upgrade the current crawler sitting in OA to an unarmoured trance crawler (50 minerals, 50 ec's, leaving 195 ec's) and add that to the CN build. Then swap the garrison scout with Sparta Command's and rehome it there, thus freeing up that last mineral for CN completion in 2150. That way we save an AA either for cashing in for a tech in one of the captured Uni bases' netnodes, or to accelerate the CDF build when we get Int Int

Plus, with 195 still in the kitty, we still have enough to upgrade the 3 rovers to impact (50 for the Warwag laser rover and 60 for the two scout rovers) even without the 27 ec's we'll get from Morgan next turn.

(btw, do we/should we owe/offer him any reparations for destroying that armored probe defender?)

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Maniac

A Crypteia in MT in five turns. Is that calculated when Minas Tirith would start training of a Crypteia right now, or after building another hoplite? Problem is that MT will grow in a few turns, so will need a second hoplite soon.

We could of course let the hoplite just trained in MT stay in that base after all, but that would then mean we'd need to squeeze in a hoplite training after all in one of our core bases, to escort the SC4 CP to its Hive border location.

Or of course build a hoplite first in MT, then a Crypteia, and hurry that production when it has reached 10 mins.

Remember that we have an Impact Rover coming off training in 2 turns that could be sent to Minas Tirith (or could catch up with the Colony Pod in transit to allow the Hoplite to stary in MT)

And our returned Elite Probe can now move to Vlad for Uni probe (and base defensive) duties, allowing the longstrider en route to MT to continue there. The new GH Crypteia can then go, as planned, up to Vlad for defensive duties, as we know there are 2 Morgan probefoils on the prowl

Eventually we'll need another Crypteia to staff the new base that'll be founded on the coast east of MT, but that's a handful of turns away

[Snoddasmannen]

Originally posted by Googlie
**Jackpot!! **
I went to bed last evening after just doing the infiltration and prepping & posting the screenies, so first thing this morning continued the turn.

Popped a completion with the Hunter and the Mercury.

This is awesome news of course. We popped an SP!
We are reaping the rewards for going for Doc:Flex early on.

Of course, this means I can start a petition for saving an AA and getting a free tech for it :P

As for war damage to the Morganites. We should never openly admit to infiltrating, in the spirit of roleplaying, but we might send them back the money we get from their trade bonus this turn and blame it on clerical errors in the intelligence department.

[Googlie]

It was strange when I did open and play some of the turn this morning. I set up the build changes in the various bases, then popped with the Hunter, and got the speeder crawler.

Great excitement (especially as I knew that the pod Mercury was going to pop would prolly yield a good event, as it was within Vlad's base radius.

But when it popped another speeder crawler, I genuinely thought that maybe I should exit and replay the turn, as luck like this would prolly arouse suspicions (even although I haven't the slightest idea of what Enigma_Nova was talking about re: altering the registry entries - whatever they are)

But then I got to thinking - high odds, but not unusual, given that one was in a base radius. Then I thought - after all, what were the odds of Rolling Thunder popping a 4 mindworm event that earkly in the game (according to Prima, about 1 in 200 !!).

So good fortune evens out bad luck - that's the nature of randomness.

So hooray for us. I didn't feel guilty any more about our good luck, and (obviously) I didn't replay the turn

G,

[Googlie]

Recap of moves and suggestions/questions for balance of moves:

Diplomacy

• Lal won't answer his commlink
• PK commlink put in Morgan in-tray (dare we send it without pre-accepting, to get one more kick at the can with Lal?)

Build Orders (completed next turn)

• Vladivostok: a Rover synthmetal trance crawler (completed this turn with the podpop)
• Sector Cratersouth: - likewise (completed this turn with the podpop)
• Olympus Academy: - The Command Nexus (Synthcrawler, trance crawler and 1 AA, (plus a switch and rehome of its scout unit)

New Build Orders needed

• Gythium Harbour: - Rec Commons (no minerals, though)
• Minas Tirith: - a supply crawler
• Rio Grande: - a supply crawler

Unit Moves Executed

• Pegasus: - W x 2, then drops off Elite probe team. Infiltration successful, so moves S x 1 towards Heaven (Angel land)
• Hunter: - Pops pod to its southwest - build completion
• Hermes: - SW x 3, to return to Vladivostok
• Invincible: - S x 1 then W x 3 to continue exploring the Gaian coastline
• Mercury: - forays out of Vlad to pop the pod in its base radius - build completion
• R-112: - SE x 1 into the fungus
• Warwag: - Up the road into Vladivostok
• Shinsengumi: -follow the riverbend SE x 1, then continue SE to join the road network (chatting to the mining crews now)
• Chiron Knights: - From Sparta Command to Vladivostok
• Rolling Thunder II (1 tile south of Rio Grande) N x 1 then NW x 4 downriver past the working Tomcats to map our new western shoreline
• SC4's Colony Pod sets off to Vladivostok to reendezvous with the Hermes in Amursky Bay (and transfer at sea to the Mercury, when in range)
• 2 Tomcats finishing mine NE of OA move W x 1 to assist 3rd in minebuilding there
• Tomcat overnighting in RG moves downriver to assist 2 Tomcats there in building mine

Unit moves under discussion

• Scout garrisonning OA swaps with scout in Sparta Command, and rehomes to there(doesn't detract from SC's Impact Rover completion, and means that OA can complete the CN without reallocating the worker off the mionolith)
• Longstrider just SE of Gythium Harbour continues 2 tiles towards Minas Tirith
• GH's new Crypteia sets off for Vladivostok
• Minas Tirith's Hoplite heads east across the peninsula to board the Mercury as it steams south with SC4's colony pod
• Tomcat west of Sparta Command SE x 1 to commence roadbuilding to Minas Tirith and the southern region
• Minas Tirith's Tomcat NE x 1 to build a mine on that rocky tile
• GH and SC4 swap scout units (and SC4's is rehomed to GH, thus using its last mineral

Rush Builds

• Santiago Citadel: - 10 ec's completes the Impact Rover this turn instead of next
• Sector Craterwest: - 13 ec's complete the Colony Pod next turn, then it plus a Hoplite can be sent through Rio Grande up to our northern coast to found a base there

Summary of proposed energy credit expenditures

• 245 in hand (2149)
• 50 to upgrade the new OA crawler to trance (2149)
• 50 to upgrade Warwag to Impact (2150)
• 60 to upgrade Shinsengumi to Impact (2150)
• 60 to upgrade Chiron Knights to Impact (2150)
• 13 to rush the Sector Craterwest Colony Pod (2149)
• 10 to rush the Santiago Citadel Impact Rover (2149)
• Thus 245 - 73 leaves us with 172 ec's in hand for 2150, when we get another 27 from Morgan, and can thus afford the 170 for rover upgrades

Any comments or other suggestions?

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Snoddasmannen
As for war damage to the Morganites. We should never openly admit to infiltrating, in the spirit of roleplaying,

Given that they'll get a message that their probe was destroyed by a Spartan one, should our response then be:

"What the heck - who's framing us?"

[Snoddasmannen]

Yes that's it. Deny! Deny! Deny! We could send them small sum of ec's in the spirit of friendship as we continue our pursuit of the real infiltrators. Or perhaps they'll understand that our funds are badly needed for their persecution.

[Modo44]

Err... what probe?

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Googlie
Given that they'll get a message that their probe was destroyed by a Spartan one, should our response then be:

"What the heck - who's framing us?"

LL

Scout garrisonning OA swaps with scout in Sparta Command, and rehomes to there(doesn't detract from SC's Impact Rover completion, and means that OA can complete the CN without reallocating the worker off the mionolith)

Sounds great to me. May I then also suggest rehoming the SC1 hoplite in SC4 to SC4? That way SC1 will still produce 3 mins, even after relocating a worker from the forest to the farm time, sufficient for completing the hoplite training.

Longstrider just SE of Gythium Harbour continues 2 tiles towards Minas Tirith

GH's new Crypteia sets off for Vladivostok

Sounds sensible indeed, with those two Gators somewhere in the neighbourhood.

Remember that we have an Impact Rover coming off training in 2 turns that could be sent to Minas Tirith

So you would not send that unit to Uniland? I've been playing the simulator a bit, and I noticed our invasion units tend to get bogged down due to garrison duty, turning our Blitzkrieg into a Sitzkrieg. Therefore I'd be tending towards saying "The more units we can send to Uniland the better." I'm even wondering if it would be a good idea to send a whole shipload of hoplites to Uniland, so those can take over the necessary garrison duty from our invasion units.

Given the instabuild feature of having 2 speeder trance synthcrawlers (for the MCC) how about the following for the Command Nexus:

Use the current synthcrawler, and then 1 of the AA's. Move the worker from the 4 mienral mine to the 7 mineral mine. That leaves 51 minerals needed to complete.

Upgrade the current crawler sitting in OA to an unarmoured trance crawler (50 minerals, 50 ec's, leaving 195 ec's) and add that to the CN build. Then swap the garrison scout with Sparta Command's and rehome it there, thus freeing up that last mineral for CN completion in 2150. That way we save an AA either for cashing in for a tech in one of the captured Uni bases' netnodes, or to accelerate the CDF build when we get Int Int

Original plan! Ignore me if you had already thought of that, but don't forget to upgrade our crawler using the unit workshop instead of upgrading it individually. Reason is upgrading a unit individually ends its turn, so the trance crawler would no longer be able to move out the base and move back in to be cashed in!

SC4's Colony Pod sets off to Vladivostok to reendezvous with the Hermes in Amursky Bay (and transfer at sea to the Mercury, when in range)

Minas Tirith's Hoplite heads east across the peninsula to board the Mercury as it steams south with SC4's colony pod

I'm somewhat confused by those. I had been working under the assumption that SNC Hermes would transport the CP to its location, and SNC Mercury would continue to ferry all sorts of units to our conquered Uni ports.
How would you organize those two trannies? What would Mercury do after dropping off the CP, and what would Hermes do?

Also why (when and where) does the MT hoplite need to be picked up? I'm wondering whether moving directly over land to the intended base location would not work?

Any other suggestions?

Worker and energy reallocations I guess.

[Googlie]

Also need some feedback on the proposed build orders - crawlers or hoplites? Clearly we need more Hoplites both for our internal expansion as well as for garrisoning Uni bases. Which leads to some other points

Hermes vs Mercury

It does make sense for the slower moving Hermes to shuttle the Colony Pod south and for the Mercury to shuttle to and from UniBase (with its much bigger carrying capacity) And I don't know what I was thinkling re the scout boarding the trannie - he'll be waiting at the coastal site across the peninsula long before the colony pod ever gets there.

And I agree that we should prolly earmark the new Impact Rover (plus RT2) for the second wave to be ferried across - again, provided that they're replaced gy hoplites for our home bases' sentry duty

[Googlie]

hmm - one of the problems of laptopping is that sometimes the sensor pad is too sensitive (like posting instead of ending a sentence)

To continue ........

so we should prolly put a priority on Hoplites rather than crawlers for those big producing bases these next 2 or 3 turns

And re the SP crawler upgrade. I did remember in the sim to use the DW to still have mps left, so let's hope that I do remember in the actual gameturn

Begging a question - if the 2 speeder crawlers are in fact enough for the MCC, should we build that in a zero-mineral base like GH? (or Inland, for safety, to make it harder to get captured in the event that we get into a war and do badly?)

[Snoddasmannen]

If we build Hoplites, would we still have enough crawlers by the time we get IntInt to instabuild the CDF immediately? Other human factions will be lusting after it too, and they are all in a position to research IntInt right? So what chances do we have to get it first?

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Googlie
so we should prolly put a priority on Hoplites rather than crawlers for those big producing bases these next 2 or 3 turns

Begging a question - if the 2 speeder crawlers are in fact enough for the MCC, should we build that in a zero-mineral base like GH? (or Inland, for safety, to make it harder to get captured in the event that we get into a war and do badly?)

Either seems fine to me.

Some little facts for consideration:

If I've looked correctly the only base that both supply speeders can reach next year, is Sparta Command. That would work out nice: with the worker relocation and unit rehoming suggested previously, the base would finish its hoplite without any excess minerals next year, meaning we could cash in those 300 crawler mins without any inefficiency. (Minerals hurried over the mineral cost of a production item are lost).

If we waited one more year and used that to reposition our supply speeders, we could build the MCC in about any base we wanted, including GH.

So a consideration to make, is the following I guess:
What do we value the most?

Let our exploration ships and transports have two extra MPs one year earlier. Also SCC Hunter, which could - if we don't pop the pod yet next year - in MY 2151 pop the pod with 6 MPs, meaning it wouldn't run any risk to get attacked by an IoD - it could flee if necessary.

Or - have two crawlers one year extra, meaning we could let them harvest resources for a year before cashing them in for the MCC.

Originally posted by Snoddasmannen
If we build Hoplites, would we still have enough crawlers by the time we get IntInt to instabuild the CDF immediately? Other human factions will be lusting after it too, and they are all in a position to research IntInt right? So what chances do we have to get it first?

Too early to say I guess. When IntInt will first be researched all depends on what the priorities are of the other factions.
Both the Gaians and Angels have DocLoy, but not yet EthCalc. So they only have one prerequisite right now.
The Morganites have EthCalc, but not yet DocLoy. Fortunately they have promised not to build the CDF IIRC.

Personally I think our best shot would be to persuade the Morganites to research IntInt for us. Then we could have IntInt in perhaps some five years.

Of course if we cash in the artifact we have a chance of getting IntInt. But on the other side there's a bigger chance we could get a useless tech such as Field Modulation, or a tech an AI already has, eg Polymorphic Software (Hive), or High Energy Chemistry (Lal).

[Googlie]

Both Speeder Crawlers can also reach OA, but I like Sparta Command better (spread the SP's around) - and it lets OA still use its high minerals production for crawler building.

And I think we should bite the bullet next turn rather than wait - those extra 2 movement points a turn earlier means 2 tiles closer to the Angels with the Pegasus probe, and gets the Hermes right in the Bay (with the colony pod boarding) with all 5 mps' to start its next turn rather than just having 3 left and stalling immediately in that fungus offshore Vlad.

(also, the Mercury will move 5 this next turn and anchor off University base - the turn after it can offload the invasion force and get back to the headlands with the mine being built NE of Vlad, where the second wave can board right from the road to the mine (the second wave prolly being the new Impact rover and the Crypteia heading to Vlad - he'll have 1/3rd mp left to leap aboard, if he can...... do we want to include a couple of Tomcats in that second wave too, for putting a mine or 2 in University Base's rocky tiles?)

And as to working with Morgan to get Int Int - I agree, even if it costs us a couple of techs (note that they are currently getting a tech every 4 years - of course that will slow as they get more techs relative to total techs - we're at the max right now 'cos we have the tech lead)

[Googlie]

2149 - Final attached

(If we are going to work with Morgan by sending Soc Psych and Doc Loyalty, then it'll have to be next turn. There just isn't enough time left with the 2149 for it to happen now