The Council of War

[Snoddasmannen]

By the way, a raid seems like such a bad wording to me. I think a more appropriate term is a pro-active defensive operation.

[Googlie]

And on the mechanics of it ....

I suggest 3 Impqact Rovers, and Kel, with the latter upgraded to amphibious.

Land the 3 rovers in the tile adjacent to MM (northeast of it), then attack MM from the Mercury with Kel. He'll take out the synthspeeder defensive unit, and at the same time the 2 probes (as the base will be destroyed that attack. He then can land and take out the blocking crawler, to free the road to MI for the 3 Rovers. If Kel has any mps left, he then can reboard the Mercury, otherwise one of the 3 rovers will need to come back after mission accomplishment to stack with Kel to avoid probe control

[Snoddasmannen]

But Kel doesn't have the MPs for that does he? He'll use one to kill the defenses and then one to capture the base, so he'll be stuck there, forcing a rover to come and play with him. I can't see the difference in using Kel to do amphibious assault -> capture or a rover to land -> attack -> capture except that it would cost us money to upgrade Kel.

Another option would be to put nerve gas pods on him and destroy the base with one attack, leaving the three rovers free to do as they wish. But of course we don't have neural grafting so he can't be both X:ed and amphibious.

One thing we might consider is the option to suicide the unit which has captured MM, just disband it, thereby allowing the other three rovers to roam freely. Losing a rover is not as bad as losing the PTS

[Googlie]

No - you're right. (I thought in the sim attack that the road network around MM was destroyed when the base fell, but that's not the case. 3 Elite Rovers would do the trick with a limited PTS only objective, 4 if we wanted to take out the HGP s well (based on current defenders)

Using 4, the first rover lands, takes out the defender, which empties the base, then takes out the crawler between MM and MI. The other 3 land and proceed to MI, and one takes out the probe defenders there. If then empty, all enter and 1 goes on to Polymers, takes out the probe defenders, and then entering if empty.

Now with the PTS in our control, we plant any bases we can (if we have colony pods in position) then obliterate Polymers first ('cos otherwise the road network around MI is destroyed if we do that one first, stranding the Polymer rover in the interior) and that attacker retreats to MM, where we have 2 rovers sitting, One returns to stack with the MM rover sitting just outside Mussels (unless that can retreat to the Mercury - I doubt it) then the remaining rover then destroys MI. They retreat towards the coast as far as the slowest one's mp's allow, always remaining stacked.

If the 2 outside the empty Mussels have enough mps to both enter MM, they do, thus destroying the base (1 pop), but it's important that the one with fewest pm's enter first as the roads will be destriyed and the other will need at least 2/3drs of a mp to enter a flat, now roadless, tile to stack with the other.

Maximum mayhem for minimum cost!!

[DeathByTheSword]

ok can some one quickly help me? we are at war with lal, uni and morgan? and what is the long term goal after finishing current missions?

[Maniac]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
ok can some one quickly help me? we are at war with lal, uni and morgan?

We were at war with the University, but now he has surrendered and signed a pact of submission.

Therefore this thread was to discuss who to go after after Zak.

Many were in favour of going after Morgan when we were ready.

But Morgan was ahead of us and declared war by mindcontrolling a ship from us.

And this year the Hive also declared war on us after refusing to give tech.

So the game will hopefully still be interesting for a while.

With Lal we've signed a pact a couple years back.

and what is the long term goal after finishing current missions?

Go after any remaining factions I guess? Though I'm personally beginning to think that if the PTS raid succeeds, we've more or less won the game.

[Snoddasmannen]

Maniac sums it up nicely. If you want to get into the mind-set of the Junta, the transcripts of our live-chat when deciding a lot of this policy (right after the Morgan mind control) is available here:

http://www2.onyx.nu/pb/chatter/chatter.php

(and for those who have already seen it, I changed the output of the parser so it looks much prettier now )

If we have more live-chats, we could put a link to that site in the factional datalinks.

[vishniac]

Of influence of atrocities on pact submissives!

Originally posted by Maniac

Also regarding atrocities, my opinion regarding those is more or less, either you don't use them at all, or either you say "To hell with commerce and my reputation" and use them as much as possible to your advantage. So if we'll get sanctions anyway for obliterating Morgan Industries, I'd go full monty and start using nerve stapling (less costs to control our drones), nerve gas (50% stronger troops) and base obliterations (to weaken Morgan more, and faster) as much as we can.
I don't know though: could Zak renounce his submission if we'd use normal atrocities too much? Or is only planet busting a big no-no?

Honorable Members of the Junta!
Let your newest colleague present himself and reply about this concern!

Yesterday, I was in single-player in SMAX.
Level: librarian
Player: Sparta
Normal pact with Domai. Myriam submitted to me. Then Yang also submitted.
Domai launched a surprise attack (all others having been eliminated, it was his sole chance to dany me immediate victory).
As I designed all my needlejets as X-needlejets from the start (lasts only one turn more and, hem, more than helpful in case of sunspot activity! ), I immediately gave command of the Spartan Air Force to Chemical Ali!
I didn't even capture any of his bases... After 10 turns, all free drones were free at last: all gazed to death, and I got immediate Conquest Victory.
I made 17 chemical attacks and neither Myriam nor Yang blinked about it.
I don't think Zakharov would either in our ACDG III.
(I don't remember the current relationship with Lal. Some problems are to be expected with that bleeding-heart!)

[Googlie]

Re: Of influence of atrocities on pact submissives!

Originally posted by vishniac
I made 17 chemical attacks and neither Myriam nor Yang blinked about it.

Welcome, Captain vishniac

And that is indeed valuable information that you bring. (I'm not a big user of nervegas - even in progenitor-faction games - so it is good to have experiential data to work with)

G.

[Snoddasmannen]

Welcome to the Junta vishniac!

Excellent report! Your research will save the lives of hundreds of Spartan soldiers though I'm not too sure about Morgan civilians.

[Maniac]

Re: Of influence of atrocities on pact submissives!

Originally posted by vishniac
(lasts only one turn more and, hem, more than helpful in case of sunspot activity! )

Heh yes. Even though we couldn't easily get IntInt this way, sunspots could prove very useful for us.

[Googlie]

Hmm - It looks as though we might want to delay our Morgan invasion and PTS raid until the 2161 turn.

Consider:

If we want to found our base in the Nexus during the year when we have the PTS in our control, it'll have to be 2161.

See pic below:

[Googlie]

As of right now we're on track for a 2160 landing and roll up to Morgan Industries.

Dare we delay it 1 turn?

[Kassiopeia]

Damn. Two extra pops or a faster invasion? I'd be partial to the latter, since all turns spend hanging around near the Morganite coast are adding to the risk of a failed landing.

[Snoddasmannen]

I'm also in favour of not delaying the attack.

Frankly, I think the raid will be difficult as it is. For sure the Morgans will pump out at least one more ship from Mussels, and we can handle that, but if they manage to build two? It will be tricky even to land our boys... And they will speed up their defensive mobilization as well. So the quicker the better imo.