ACDG5: The Wardroom

[vyeh]

Because Seaview has been the recipient of two materials pod, we have the opportunity to build the Planetary Transit System there in two turns.

In 2136, we will have 4 minerals accumulated. The Trance Skimmer Supply is worth 99 minerals. The Trance Rover Supply is worth 162 minerals. It costs 270 minerals to build the Planetary Transit System, so we're only 5 minerals short.

If the Trance Rover Supply crawls 1 min from the rocky square next to Seaview, we will accumulate 5 more mins for 2137 and so we would have the Planetary Transit System at the beginning of 2138.

Currently (2135), Morgan needs 4 turns to complete the Planetary Transit System.

With the Planetary Transit System, all new bases begin at size 3 (and I think bases that are less than size 3 at the time become size 3). There is one less drone at bases of size 3 and under.

I'm putting it to a vote.

[vyeh]

Did you contact Morgan? Did he refuse to talk?

[Nahkrinoth]

The freshwater sea is giving us 2 nutrients per square with no improvements. Can we speed up terraforming in there so we can grow faster? After the Suez or East colony pods are built we could get another sea former.

[vyeh]

Sea former costs 36 minerals; land former costs 18 minerals; sea crawler costs 45 minerals; land crawler costs 27 minerals. Times for land and sea terraforming are comparable (cultivate farm/sea kelp is 4 turns; construct mine/mining platform is 8 turns; build solar collectors runs from 4 - 8 turns), but there is nothing comparable to forest for sea terraforming.

Growing faster without productive squares for workers isn't helpful in the short term. We need mineral producing squares to build facilities (including drone control facilities) and units (including formers and crawlers). We need energy producing squares for research, facilities maintenance and rushing.

Because we have crawlers, we can have highly productive bases without having a high population. Once we get the Planetary Transit System, each base will have three workers. There is a lot of former work that will be required to optimize those three squares and with the exception of the sea bonus squares, I think we can produce more minerals and energy if we concentrate on the land squares first.

East has a lot of untapped land potential because of all the canyon squares, so we can get more minerals if we focus on the land squares (we can only get one mineral from a sea square if we construct a mining platform, which takes eight turns; we can get two minerals from a land square if we plant a forest, which takes four turns).

Suez is probably better off building recycling tanks for the same cost as a sea former as recycling tanks give an extra nutrient, an extra mineral and an extra energy as soon as it is constructed.

[vyeh]

BETWEEN 2136 AND 2137:

(1) BRCM builds recreation commons. Switch to former.

(2) Ushuaia builds trance rover supply. Switch to recycling tanks.

(3) Sunken City builds trance plasma sentinels. Switch to children's creche.

FOR 2137:

(4) Sunken City trance plasma sentinels hold.

(5) Sunken City plasma hoverboat heads toward Spartan waters.

(6) Seaview recon rover moves 1 sq. S and holds.

(7) East former moves 2 sq. N and plants forest.

(8) BRCM former builds road.

(9) South former droid moves 1 sq. SW.

(10) Ushuaia trance rover supply moves 1 sq. NW, 1 sq. N and crawls 2 min for Ushuaia.

(11) Drydock gun foil near Ushuaia moves 2 sq. S.

(12) Drydock plasma coastal moves toward Spartan waters.

(13) Change Seaview to Trance Rover Supply. Northernmost Drydock gun fpil pops pod to N, then next pod N. If no materials pod, change Seaview back to Planetary Transit System.

(14) Seaview gun foil moves 1 sq. W, 1 sq. N. (It is important that the northernmost Drydock gun foil pops its two pods first. If it gets a sonar pod, this will locate that hostile Spartan ship and allow the Seaview gun foil to manuever to avoid it.)

(15) Change Sunken City to Trance Rover Supply. Easternmost South gun foil pops pod north of it and then moves toward Last Rose of Summer. If no materials pod, change Sunken City back to children's creche.

(16) Westernmost South gun foil moves 1 sq. E, 1 sq. NE (to explore black squares).

(17) If Seaview is producing the Planetary Transit System (that is, no materials pod has completed a trance rover supply at Seaview), cash in the Trance Rover Supply next to it and the Trance Skimship Supply two squares away.

(18) If Morgan wasn't contacted last turn, contact Morgan. He's just researched Ecological Engineering last turn. Try to get it (we're currently researching it). Don't get into any vendettas. Check his mood, particularly about us running Planned Economy.

[vyeh]

Doctrine: Initiative gives us cruisers.
Synthetic Fossil Fuels gives us missile launchers (weapons 6) and will give us the second prerequisite for Doctrine: Airpower
Centauri Meditation gives us Isle of the Deep and Centauri Preserve.
Advanced Subatomic Theory gives us Skunkworks and leads to Silksteel Alloys (defense 4)
Environmental Economics gives us Tree Farms and lifts the energy restrictions

I think there are only two serious choices: Synthetic Fossil Fuels and Environmental Economics.

Synthetic Fossil Fuel falls within our "fangs and claws" doctrine. We've seen that the Spartans have Gatling lasers (weapons 5). We currently only have impact (weapons 4). In addition, Synthetic Fossil Fuel leads to airpower. It would be a tremendous disadvantage for someone else to have needlejets while all we had was AA.

Environmental Economics: Tree Farms would be a great boost in our economic development. The energy restrictions aren't a great deal at this time since we currently have no terraformed squares where this is a factor.

We can live without tree farms; I don't think the same can be said about needlejets.

I'd recommend we continue our "claws and fangs" approach and research Synthetic Fossil Fuels so we maintain military parity.

[vyeh]

When you have a chance, could we get a screenshot for 2135 for our historical records?

Congratulations on your successful diplomacy.

We need to consider whether we should pursue vendettas against the Believers and the Hive to keep our pact mates happy.

With Centauri Empathy comes Green. After Suez has built its colony pod, I think we should go green. First, it will go a long way to keeping Morgan and Deidre happy. We will get a big efficiency boost going from - 2 efficiency under planned to + 2 efficiency under green. We'll go to + 2 planet and have the ability to capture isles of the deep and mindworms. Although we will go from +2 growth to -2 growth, this can be mitigated by going democracy (after the current Suez and East colony pods have built their bases) and children's creche. With planetary transit systems, we're behind in our terraforming. We also have crawlers. We can easily deal with slower growth.

Centauri Empathy also gives Biology Lab, which is +2 labs/turn. If we build these along with going green, we'll see a big boost in our research.

Doctrine: Loyalty gives perimeter defense. Sunken City will need this.

Ecological Engineering lifts the mineral restrictions. We should build mines on those rocky squares and crawl them.

I don't want to contact Morgan or Deidre until we go green or we declare war against the Believers or the Hive. If they get too unhappy, we could lose our pacts.

BETWEEN 2136 AND 2137:

(1) We will have a choice of Doctrine: Initiative, Synthetic Fossil Fuels, Centauri Meditation, Advanced Subatomic Theory of Environmental Economics. Choose Synthetic Fossil Fuels.

(2) BRCM builds recreation commons. Switch to former.

(3) Ushuaia builds trance rover supply. Switch to recycling tanks.

(4) Sunken City builds trance plasma sentinels. Switch to children's creche.

FOR 2137:

(5) Sunken City trance plasma sentinels hold.

(6) Sunken City plasma hoverboat heads toward Spartan waters.

(7) Seaview recon rover moves 1 sq. S and holds.

(8) East former moves 2 sq. N and plants forest.

(9) BRCM former builds road.

(10) South former droid moves 1 sq. SW.

(11) Ushuaia trance rover supply moves 1 sq. NW, 1 sq. N and crawls 2 min for Ushuaia.

(12) Drydock gun foil near Ushuaia moves 2 sq. S.

(13) Drydock plasma coastal moves toward Spartan waters.

(14) Change Seaview to Trance Rover Supply. Northernmost Drydock gun fpil pops pod to N, then next pod N. If no materials pod, change Seaview back to Planetary Transit System.

(15) Seaview gun foil moves 1 sq. W, 1 sq. N. (It is important that the northernmost Drydock gun foil pops its two pods first. If it gets a sonar pod, this will locate that hostile Spartan ship and allow the Seaview gun foil to manuever to avoid it.)

(16) Change Sunken City to Trance Rover Supply. Easternmost South gun foil pops pod north of it and then moves toward Last Rose of Summer. If no materials pod, change Sunken City back to children's creche.

(17) Westernmost South gun foil moves 1 sq. E, 1 sq. NE (to explore black squares).

(18) If Seaview is producing the Planetary Transit System (that is, no materials pod has completed a trance rover supply at Seaview), cash in the Trance Rover Supply next to it and the Trance Skimship Supply two squares away.

[vyeh]

When you get a chance, how about a screenshot for 2137 and 2135?

Another 30 credits from the most successful explorers in our history!

Don't worry about unexplored squares. One of them is a sea square and the other is a jungle square. We can fill this in when a surviving gun foil passes by on the way back.

BEFORE ENDING 2137:

(1) Hurry East colony pod for 13 credits (full payment; to give the next build, a former a leg up).

(2) Hurry HQ Network Node for 14 credits (parital payment; we want to complete the Network Node because we're going to lose our + 10% industry bonus, but we need 40 credits to switch to green).

(3) Hurry Suez colony pod for 13 credits (full payment; to give the next build, recycling tanks a leg up - this will shorten by a turn the time it takes to get to 10 mins for the recycling tanks).

(4) Activate Ushuaia former and reset it to cultivating farm (Ushaia will need this to grow - note the turn invested in planting forest is transferred to cultivating farm).

BETWEEN 2137 AND 2138:

(5) HQ will build network node. Change to crawler.

(6) East will build colony pod. Change to former.

(7) Seaview builds planetary transit system. Change to former.

(8) Suez builds colony pod. Change to recycling tanks.

FOR 2138:

(9) Switch Ushuaia trance rover supply from crawling 3 minerals to 1 nutrient.

(10) Switch to green economy for 40 credits.

(11) Drydock gun foil near Ushuaia moves 1 sq. S, 1 sq. SW, pops pod and moves north.

(12) South former droid builds road.

(13) East colony pod goes to South.

(14) Suez colony pod goes 3 sq. N (it waits for Suez former droid to finish building road).

(15) Drydock plasma coastal moves 4 sq. N (this is its patrol route; it will patrol between the two land masses looking for transports and other noncombat Spartan sea units).

(17) Change Seaview to trance rover supply. Seaview gun foil pops pod to NW, then pod to N (so it ends up away from Spartan bases). If no materials pod, set Seaview back to producing former.

(18) Damaged Drydock gun foil heads to nearest monolith to heal.

(19) Easternmost South gun foil pops pod to north and heads to Last Rose of Summer.

(20) Westernmost South gun foil moves to waters between the Hive and University.

(21) Sunken City plasma hoverboat moves toward Spartan waters.

(22) Seaview recon rover 1 sq. W of HQ moves to 1 sq. E of South (to escort East colony pod).

[vyeh]

Lt. Nahkrinoth,

Another point in favor of building land formers first. Assuming we're in green economy:

Once we have ten accumulated minerals, it only cost 25 credits to hurry a land former, but 105 credits to hurry a sea former (over four times as much). For our finite mineral production and credits, we could get to full productivity by building land formers and land crawlers until we exhausted the land (at least the non-fungus squares) and then with our increased mineral production, it would be quick work to build sea formers and sea crawlers.

The current situation is complicated by the fact that we have recently been presented unexpectedly with (1) crawlers, (2) the Planetary Transit System and (3) ecological engineering. Before, our limited number of formers could build roads and optimize our base production with forests, a few farms and solar collectors. With bases going from 1 to 3 in a single turn, the ability to crank out crawlers and the lifting of minerals restrictions, we need more formers.

One reason for shifting from planned to green is that energy is becoming more important than minerals. Tech research is costing more and we can build crawlers to offset the lost of the industry bonus that we got from planned. Another reason, which may be more important, is that both Morgan and Deidre object to plan. Those tech trades have been vital.

Also on the diplomatic front: should we enter into vendetta with Miriam and Yang to keep our pact mates happy. I'd like to wait until our gun foils are out of their waters.

For our vendetta with the Spartans, I think we need to have two impact foils and then a probe foil to infiltrate the Spartans.

I think that once East and Suez colony pods have established bases (and taken those ten free minerals), it will be time to switch to democratic. That will balance out the growth hit of green and double the efficiency bonus of green, which will help our tech research. We'll take a one mineral per base hit on support, but that can be made up with one crawler.

[vyeh]

I'm putting the issue of switching to green economy up for a vote.

I'm in favor of switching for one reason: tech research.

Under planned, our research rate is very slow. We've gotten a lot of tech from Morgan and Deidre and they are not happy about planned. If we continue planned, we will lose the tech race.

Crawlers won't help much. It takes 4-8 turns to build a solar collector and for most of our squares, we'd only get 1 energy.

In contrast, crawlers can easily make up the loss of growth and minerals in switching from planned to green. A moist square can be farmed in 4 turns. One crawler can get two nutrients (doubling the rate of growth of a base which already has a two nutrient surplus). A flat or rolling square can be forested in 4 turns. If a base has a surplus of ten minerals (Drydock has 11 and HQ has 8), then one crawler can increase production by 20%. So two crawlers more than make up for the growth and mineral hit.

[Nahkrinoth]

I understand and agree to going green. When I mentioned sea formers earlier it hadn't occurred to me that we'll need a bunch of land terraforming already done for our new 3 size bases.

If we are in a position to do so, we can switch from green to planned/democratic to pop boom for a few turns and then back to green before the drones wreck our bases. But for now our default position should be green.

Make sure we're getting enough crawlers to offset the loss of industry!

[vyeh]

I think we can switch to democratic after East and Suez colony pods have established bases (taking advantage of the ten free minerals). After that, we can go to democratic. We'll take a hit of one mineral at most, but since all of the bases except Suez will be size 3, that will be tolerable. With democratic/green we'll enjoy high efficiency and a positive planet rating while growth will be neutral.

After we build children's creche, we'll have a positive growth. Then we can switch to planned for a few terms once we have enough squares terraformed. If we have enough crawlers, we'll be able to afford the doctors to keep the bases from rioting.

First, we need to make sure each base has enough optimized squares for its three workers. Then we can mine rocky squares or forest other squares for crawling minerals.

[Nahkrinoth]

Can we start building boreholes and condensers?

[vyeh]

We have the tech (Ecological Engineering) for them; however, we still have a restriction on energy, so a borehole will only produce 2 energy.At this point, condensors take 12 turns to construct and boreholes take 24 turns to construct.

Since we don't have tree farms or hybrid forest, each borehole reduces our clean mineral limit by 1 mineral (2 if the borehole is worked) and each condensor reduces our clean mineral limit by 1/2 mineral (1 if the condensor is worked).

A mine/road on rocky square takes 11 former turns to build and produces 4 minerals. A forest/road combination costs 5 or 6 former turns and produces 2 minerals. Until we run out of land around a base, it is probably more cost effective to build mines or forests for our mineral needs.

Most of our land is moist. A farm (4 turns) adds 1 nutrient to a moist square. A condensor (12 turns) on that square adds another 2 nutrients. Again, until we run out of land around a base, it is more effective to build farms than condensors.

[vyeh]

We have nerve gas (from High Energy Chemistry). I checked the design workshop; we can't put it on ships, so it doesn't change our naval strategy.

We're basically in a building mode with a naval defense to keep Believing and Spartans off our continent. If they every got on our continent, nerve gas would make defense more expensive for us. We're not contemplating attack at this time. So repealing the U.N. Charter is bad for us.

Our rational vote is to vote "Nay." Since it doesn't make a difference to the outcome and since we're not going to get brownie points with our pact mates (they're all voting differently), let's vote "Nay."

BETWEEN 2137 AND 2138:

(1) Colonel Santiago convenes the Planetary Council to vote on repealing the U.N. Charter. Vote "Nay."

(2) HQ will build network node. Change to crawler.

(3) East will build colony pod. Change to former.

(4) Seaview builds planetary transit system. Change to former.

(5) Suez builds colony pod. Change to recycling tanks.

FOR 2138:

(6) Move Ushuaia trance rover supply 1 sq. S and crawl 1 nutrient.

(7) Move Ushuaia worker from 1-1-0 square to 1-3-1 forest.

(8) Switch to green economy for 40 credits.

(9) Drydock gun foil near Ushuaia moves 1 sq. S, 1 sq. SW, pops pod and moves north.

(10) South former droid builds road.

(11) East colony pod goes to South.

(12) Suez colony pod goes 3 sq. N (it waits for Suez former droid to finish building road).

(13) Drydock plasma coastal moves 4 sq. N (this is its patrol route; it will patrol between the two land masses looking for transports and other noncombat Spartan sea units).

(14) Change Seaview to trance rover supply. Seaview gun foil pops pod to NW, then pod to N (so it ends up away from Spartan bases). If no materials pod, set Seaview back to producing former.

(15) Damaged Drydock gun foil heads to nearest monolith to heal.

(16) Easternmost South gun foil pops pod to north and heads to Last Rose of Summer.

(17) Westernmost South gun foil moves to waters between the Hive and University.

(18) Sunken City plasma hoverboat moves toward Spartan waters.

(19) Seaview recon rover 1 sq. W of HQ moves to 1 sq. E of South (to escort East colony pod).