MY-2197 - Planning & Execution Thread

[Googlie]

Turn's up!!

(And a good job we called elections when we did - this turn the Gaians have overtaken the Hive as the 2nd most populous faction)

[Googlie]

Some preliminary moves:

• Invincible puts into 2Nuts for repairs
• Golden Dawn Arcadian task force assembles and sails - anchors in Hive waters on the sunny seafungus tile 8 away from Morgania
• upgraded a chaos rover to amphibous status

Here's the eastern task force:

[Snoddasmannen]

Looking great! Quite a bizarre army though

Should we switch to power? Those Commando units would go elite, and the veteran units might become elite after a glorious victory. On the other hand it would slow down our production of reinforcements. I still support going power though, but what do the rest of you think?

On a different note, it seems like an appropriate thing to do to write a little story in time for next years invasion. Told from the eyes of a soldier on the front, to be sent when it is our turn, but not revealing the identity of the victims. Any takers or should I do it? Hell, we can do two of them

[Zeiter]

Question: will the sunspots affect our military plans any?

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Zeiter
Question: will the sunspots affect our military plans any?

Don't think so - other than no-one will be able to talk to us in-game while we eliminate Morgan

Here's the supplemental northern force. Next turn the cruiser will sail into the Uni base, from whence we can drop the troops into the 2 (to be emptied by B-8's) Morgan bases

Any other option exposes the drop troops to Morgan infiltration on the Uni, or else puts our drop troops out of range

[Googlie]

Some further moves:

• Trannie and coastguard in southern Arcadian ocean move to vicintiy of Kel Bay
• new Bunker-112 Colony Pod moves to Kel hatrbour - will board the trannie next turn and deploy to designated build site
• Arcadian task force takes up position in the fungus, protected by the Tacticus, and covered by an Elite F-8
• IoD with the 2 probes moves east to within striking distance of "Choke on This" - can think about mind controlling that base next turn (and get a F-6 out of it!!)
• 2 F-8's and an F-6 deploy into Buster ocean - will land next turn in captured bases (one providing current CAP for the invasion fleet)

[Googlie]

Upgraded the R-112 and the scout rover in the Arcadian task force to Chaos fusion amphirovers - here's the battleforce:

[Googlie]

And here's the .sav with those task forces in position

(the earlier saves were when I was flipping between desktop and laptop to make the screenies - I've lost photoshop on my upgraded desktop)

I got one reload message in an earlier save with the flip - I forgot to rename the save when going back from laptop to desktop, but I think that the midturn-4 is a clean save

Lots of moves still to be made - units, wormhunting, formers and crawlers, MM's, etc, but those'll have to wait a few hours

[Googlie]

I see that the Angels have now captured Communal Nexus - good for them (will make it easier for us to get our hands on it through them rather than through Yang!!)

[Snoddasmannen]

Originally posted by Googlie
Upgraded the R-112 and the scout rover in the Arcadian task force to Chaos fusion amphirovers - here's the battleforce:

What is the attack plan for these troops? I can't see how they can arrive in time to capture any Morgan bases in time next turn.

[Zeiter]

It seems to me that we have two options:

1. We launch the attack next turn (MY 2198). If we do this, we will have to try to mind control Morgan Weapon Arm with the probe teams on the IoD, and then sail the South Arcadian task force over to Morgan Weapon Arm and manually unload the forces into that city. The Laconian task force would be able to reach Vander Eudaimonics, but the forces would have to manually unload there. Thus, they wouldn't be able to advance any further that same turn.

2. We wait until MY 2199 to launch the invasion. This is the option I support. An important factor to consider is that Morgan is going to get fusion power by next turn anyways, so we won't be able to launch the invasion before they get fusion power, no matter what. Thus, I think we should take the utmost preparations to make sure our initial attack is as devastating as possible, even if this delays the attack until MY 2199. If we delay until MY 2199 (which was the original plan, after all), then we can:
A. Move the Laconian task force into position better, so that the cruiser will be able to move into Vander Eudaimonics once the city has been emptied and unload all of the land units with their movement points still intact.
B. Move the Southern Arcadian task force into position to attack Choke on This and wipe out the Morganite air fleet on MY 2199. It seems to me that an attack here is much more valuable than an attack on Morgan Weapons Arm.
C. Move the northern Arcadian supplemental force into position for attack in MY 2199. I don't see, as it is now, how we could attack with the northern force in MY 2198.
D. We can move the IoD with the probe teams to (26,38) in MY 2198, so that the IoD will be able to unload the probe teams, mind control Morgan Weapon's Arm, and move the IoD into the city in MY 2199.

So, I suggest that we wait until next turn to switch to power, and that we prepare to launch the invasion in MY 2199.

Edit: Also, if we upgrade some more of our Arcadian forces to amphibious and switch to power (making them all ELITE), then we can empty and capture Choke on This in MY 2199.

[Zeiter]

What we can do is upgrade that one missile infantry on the south Arcadian task force to amphibious. We can leave the skanky's sileni as it is, considering we'll need one unit to capture Choke on This.

I have a question: can sensor arrays detect units in fungus that are two squares away? If so, then we wouldn't want to sail the south Arcadian Task Force (SATF) to (22,26). Instead, we could sail the force to (20,28) and we could attack Choke on This in MY 2199, although we wouldn't be able to unload our forces onto land in that case. On the other hand, if sensor arrays can NOT detect units in fungus two squares away, then we might want to sail the SATF to (22,26). In that case, we would be able to attack Choke on This and sail the cruiser into the city after it had been captured, unloading all of the units into the city.

In my mind, taking out the bulk (or all of) the airfleet at Choke on This is the pivotal part of this invasion plan. If we succeed at that, the Morganites will be left without possibility of counterattack, and we will pave them over with our other task forces. If we fail with taking out that air fleet, it's going to be tough going.

[Zeiter]

I did some worker and specialist relocations, one crawler adjustment (switched a nutrient crawler to minerals, since that crawler's base is growing this turn and doesn't need the nutrients), and put down some tentative build orders for all of those bases that were stockpiling energy. Those can all be changed, if desired. In fact, I'm rather F-8-happy with my build orders right now, so you'll probably want to switch those around quite a bit. I didn't move any units or do anything irrevocable.

[Googlie]

Thought process was:

Laconian task force cruisers are Elite (9 mp's) so can reach Vander Eudaimonics in 1 turn. The about-to-be-commissioned F-8 at Fort Buster can take out the Morgan interceptor at VE and our B-8 that has landed at Craterwest can take out the plasma defender. The fleet can reach the bay, where 1 of our amphimarines can take out the last defender (and the probe team there) and then we can occupy and dock the transports). The rovers will fan out, capturing Polymers (and the HGP), Vulcanology, Ski Resort and Robotics (and perhaps Money Valley and Red Fungus as well)

The B-8's from Fort Liberty will simultaneously empty Mussels and ZZT, and the drop units from Gagarin Memorial (where the trannie with the 3 drop units will dock) will secure these 2 bases - and be upgraded to plasma AAA defenders.

The Arcadian task force can reach - and capture - Morgan Weapons Arm (but the road connection from there to Choke has been cut) - or can mind control the base for +/- 300 credits.

If we did all that in this next turn, we'd have taken his industrial heartland, west coast, and gained a beachhead in the south, with re-inforcements to be poured in the turn after

I don't see any downside to attacking next turn - the bulk of his forces are in Choke, dealing with the Yang threat. Waiting one more, while maybe giving us a jucier target, just gives him one more turn of Fusion to upgrade, making the "jucier" targets much harder nuts to crack (to mix metaphors)

[Zeiter]

Wait, the laconian task force cruisers only get 8 mp's, not 9. Even if they are elite (they'd normally get 7 mp's). Soooo...

I did realize that Morgan only has about 5 planes (rest are choppers), so that's a somewhat limited counterattack capability for Morgan on our cities, but still...taking out the airfleet at Choke on This would make the rest of the invasion a breeze. Even IF the Morganites upgrade their defenses to fusion, they will still be low-morale plasma, and they will have to defend against our elite chaos rovers and chaos aircraft. They would still stand no chance. The main threat to our invasion will be the Morganite counterattack, it seems to me, not initially breaking through and taking out the necessary defenders, which should be a cakewalk (I doubt we'll even lose one offensive battle).