Discussion Thread re: Winning by Transcendence

[Googlie]

this thread meant to be for ideas and discussion regarding how Sparta could win by transcendence (I'll start similar ones for diplomacy and military victory ideas - prolly not worthwhile strating one for an economic victory)

So I'll start the ball rolling:

An idea to boost our reseach capability

When Fort Soup enters - and sustains - its popboom, churn out nothing but colony pods from there, and send them Zak's way and transfer control to the university - every new base Zak builds has a network node giving a 50% science boost, far better than we ourselves could achieve

When they get big and juicy enough, we can always extort them from him if we feel the need for Sparta to have the base instead of Zak

(Plus, there'd be some great RP opportunites for stories about erstwhile University citizens forming colony convoys to trek towards eastern Arcadia)

[Googlie]

Another reason why it's more advantageous for the university to grow from 4 bases to 11 than for Fort Soup to grow from size 7 to size 14 - paired bases commerce income.

Apart from the research boost that Zak having 7 addiitonal network nodes would represent, both He and us would also benefit from 11 paired bases commerce income than our current 4 (and Zak also would see income grow from his pact with lal, as lal, too, is expanding his # bases)

Our economists need to run a study of the pros and cons of Fort Soup at size 14 versus staying at size 7 and having 7 more University bases - minerals, research and commerce income

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Googlie
Our economists need to run a study of the pros and cons of Fort Soup at size 14 versus staying at size 7 and having 7 more University bases - minerals, research and commerce income

Maybe a compromise? I mean, we can not grow it to size 14 as it is, right? How about getting where possible, and then making the Colony Pods?

[DeathByTheSword]

to general idea

[Maniac]

Sounds great!
Though why not do both: first let Fort Soup grow to size 14 and then churn out CPs? (I'm not sure if that's what Modo suggests) And this could of course be done with any popbooming base, not just FS.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Maniac
Though why not do both: first let Fort Soup grow to size 14 and then churn out CPs? (I'm not sure if that's what Modo suggests) And this could of course be done with any popbooming base, not just FS.

Heh, I missed that Fort Sup (not Soup ) is already at maximum population due to the lack of a Hab Complex (unless I am missing something). So, either we start making the Colony Pods now, or we need to build it up anyway (and that would mean growing to use the new facilities!).

New bases (whether for us or for Zak) will need to be defended, so we need to have the ability to do that first. I would let the most productive bases grow all the way up, and use less productive ones to actually make Colony Pods. Yes, that is slower, but we will need to terraform quite a few tiles before new bases make sense anyway.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
The people inquire as to how one transfers control of a unit to another player

Ctrl + Shift + U when your unit is in the territory of the faction you want to give the unit to.

IIRC if you give this command to native units, they are released back into the wild (allows for some innovative tactics so I heard).

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Maniac

IIRC if you give this command to native units, they are released back into the wild (allows for some innovative tactics so I heard).

Absolutely - build a dozen mindworms, then trannie them across to Morgan and release them (pity he now has base defenders and aircraft - would have been a great tactic when he had a slew of undefended bases)

[wuy3]

ya but our released mindworms don't get the spartan moral bounous when they are under alien control (right?). Tthis would be a great tactic if they can't trace back to who made the worms.

[Googlie]

Resurrecting this idea:

Next turn Arcadia University will be size 8, and can't grow any further without an investment in drone-contol facilities (it has a rec commons and a holotheater, and 2 CDF's) such as a research hospital and/or a tree farm/hybrid forest combo.

But what it will do is every turn grow from size 7 to size 8 if we reduce its population to size 7 - and every second turn it can produce a colony pod

So while Fort Soup is churning out crawlers to MM facilities in other bases, why don't we meanwhile, at least for the next 4 turns, produce 2 CP's and send them Zak's way for new base building (network nodes and commerce income from 2 new paired bases with us)

After that, with a plethora of crawlers from FS factories, we can then look to boosting AU to size 14 with appropriate facilties for drone control

[vishniac]

I can't say I'm fond of this idea.

It seems like diverting precious time and resources for some random result.

Having Zak with one or two bases 3 more won't make that a difference, I think. Better have these bases for ourselves, giving us money and building units. When our bases become superbases, we even can build network nodes too (and fusion labs...when they come)

And the idea of winning by transcendence seems so far away... We can probably win this game by conquest.

I know it's not elaborated but...let's say I'm just against on this one.

[Modo44]

Well, one thing has changed the whole situation a lot. With the Planetary Datalinks it is almost impossible for the others to hold technology away from us, at least not for a long time. While the idea of Transcendence is not so bad, we are now even better preapared for war, as we do not need to be nice to get techs. And I think we should follow the conquest path, even more so because it is very much in-character for Sparta.

Improving Zak's ability to research is not so important anymore. I think building up our own bases would do much more good now. But I would suggest Energy Banks instead of Network Nodes, except if we need the latter to use Artifacts. Cash can be easily (re)directed into research, but it does not work the other way around.