ACDG5: The Wardroom

[Nahkrinoth]

I'd rather go heavier on minerals before research.

[vyeh]

Lt. Nahkrinoth,

There is a message for you at the comm center.

One build priority under a heavier mineral before research looks like this:

(1) garrisons for new bases (drone control and military preparedness).

(2) perimeter defense for exposed bases.

(3) prototype new weapons, armor, chassis (military preparedness is important).

(4) colony pods when an expansion site is necessary.

(5) recycling tanks for new bases.

(6) formers (land and sea) until we have enough to maximize the productivity of our workers (priorities: enough nutrients to grow, then minerals, finally energy).

(7) crawlers and formers (both land and sea) to build up mineral production until the base is just below the pollution threshold.

(8) biology labs.

(9) network nodes when a base is producing at least 7 labs at 70% labs.

(10) children's creches to prepare for a popboom.

Maybe it would be better to get each base up to a production of ten minerals and then switch to research (10 minerals is the threshold when hurrying becomes cheaper).

[vyeh]

Wasted 16 research points? Was the social engineering slider set at 70% economy/30% labs before ending the year? It is not a waste. It means that we traded roughly 26 credits for 13 labs, which was a trade we were willing to make a few turns ago.

BEFORE ENDING 2143:

(1) In design workshop, design fungicidal sea formers by adding fungicide tanks to sea formers. Upgrade all future sea formers to fungicidal sea formers at no cost.

BETWEEN 2143 AND 2144:

(2) If Santiago contacts us, we'll do a trade that does not involve us giving her Synthetic Fossil Fuels or High Energy Chemistry. Do not end the vendetta (even if our patrol vessels are confronted by that (5)-2-4 Gatling foil, there are two of them so we have a chance of trading one of our vessels for the Gatling foil).

(3) If Miriam contacts us, we'll do a trade that does not involve Nonlinear Mathematics or Synthetic Fossil Fuels. We will not end our pact with Morgan. We won't give into extortion.

(4) Watch for Spartan units slipping by our patrol boats.

(5) HQ builds formers. Change to fungicidal formers.

FOR 2144:

(6) HQ former at HQ moves 1 sq. W, 1 sq. S and cultivates farm (for Gibraltar).

(7) HQ former droid removes fungus.

(8) Gateway trance scout infantry at HQ monolith and Gibraltar trance scout infantry at East exchange places (Gibraltar trance scout infantry investigates monolith).

(9) HQ trance scout infantry at monolith moves 1 sq. SW, 1 sq. W, 1 sq. S (will move to support HQ former droid).

(10) East trance scout infantry at South and Ushuaia trance scout infantry at East exchange places.

(11) Ushuaia former with movement point builds solar collector.

(12) Ushuaia trance rover supply moves 1 sq. NW, 1 sq. W, 2 sq. SW and crawls 1 mineral for Ushuaia (next turn it will switch to Gibraltar).

(13) BRCM former constructs solar collector.

(14) Seaview former (with movement point) moves 1 sq. S, attempts to move 1 sq. E.

(15) East former near Gateway moves 1 sq. N, re-homes to Gateway and attempts to move 1 sq. NE.

(16) Suez former moves 1 sq. E (to terraform square for crawler for Gateway).

(17) Drydock impact foil moves to Spartan waters.

(18) Sunken City plasma hoverboat and Drydock plasma coastal patrol south searching for Spartan noncombat units and attacking them. They should end up roughly in the row between Seat of Proper Thought and Blast Rifle Crag.

(19) Look inside Monitoring Station (we're pact with the University so we can look inside). If there is a Hive ship (the Hive is also pact with the University), head 1 sq. SW, 3 sq. S. Otherwise head north.

(20) Mindworm on the Hive continent rests.

(21) Northern Drydock gun foil heads 2 sq. NW and investigates monolith.

(22) IoD moves 1 sq. W, unloads mindworm (so it can get a monolith promotion) and moves 3 sq. E.

(23) Eastern South gun foil explores (remember rules for popping pod, e.g. gun foil has 3 movement points remaining before popping pod in non-fungus water).

(24) Southern Drydock gun foil moves toward Manifold Nexus Central.

(25) Move South worker from 3-0-0 sea kelp square to 2-0-1 farm river square.

(26) Rename South "Bay City."

(27) Change Gibraltar production to sea colony pod.

[Nahkrinoth]

Sea colony pod placement:

(1) Our blockade of the Believers would be further augmented if we had a sea base at 42.58. It's an energy square and it has kelp nearby. It would block them out and be relatively self sufficient from the start.

(2) Between Morgan and Zak is a shallow and wide ocean. in the middle of it at 25.37 is an energy square. A sea base here and a land base on MNC island would allow us to effectively cut the map in half in terms of sea travel. They are at the same time strategically important locations as well as being productive bases.

(3) New Sargasso, Atlantic Ruins, and Geothermal Shallows are fantastic spots to build 4 or 5 sea bases. It'll further our military presence in that region, but it's so far away. If we can safely escort sea colony pods out there and defend the bases until they can defend themselves, then we should make plans to settle the area.

[Nahkrinoth]

We should rename South to Bay City.

Sea forming:

BRCM's first sea former will finish the kelp farm and then move to the nutrient square adjacent to Seaview and plant more kelp there. When BRCM's second former finishes it will plant kelp N-NW of BRCM and then assist the first former.

Ushuaia's sea former will remove the fungus off of the energy square and then tidal kelp it.

South's sea former should either develop the bay or remove the fungus from the mineral square near Gibraltar. I'm not sure which is more important.

[vyeh]

Sea colony placement:

(1) Good suggestion. Assuming Lt. Bodissey doesn't object, we can assign Gibraltar to build a colony pod (production will become faster as we build forests and mines and assign it Ushuaia's crawler). I've edited the instructions for 2144 to send the trance rover supply in that direction.

(2) Another good suggestion. Gateway can build a sea colony pod after it has built recycling tanks. I've edited the instructions for 2144 to use the Suez former to move to a rocky square to construct a mine. We'll construct a crawler from another base and send it to Gateway. We can move the Sunken City plasma hoverboat from its patrol duties to escort the sea colony pod the short distance.

(3) We'll need one missile foil (or cruiser) and a plasma hoverboat to escort a sea colony pod to the Atlantic Ruins. There are two adjacent base sites that have access to all 7 monoliths. We wouldn't need to worry about terraforming. From that site we could build more sea colony pods.

Name change:

Bay City sounds good to me. I've edited the instructions for 2144 to include the name change.

Sea forming:

(1) Note that the nutrient square has xenofungus. It would take 6 turns for the square to go from a 1-0-0 to a 4-0-0 and another 4 to go to a 6-0-0. In the meantime Suez is using a 2-2-0 bonus mineral square. It would take 6 turns (plus another turn in transit) to turn that square into a 2-2-3 and 4 more to a 4-2-3 square. I think it makes more sense to maximize existing worker squares before working on squares for future workers or crawlers.

(2) Why would BRCM's second sea former be planting kelp? A tidal harness would bring 3 energy and the energy would be more useful in boosting our tech rate.

(3) "Tidal kelp:" does that mean tidal harness first, kelp second? Kelp plus tidal harness produces a 3-0-5 square. Kelp plus mining platform produces a 3-1-2 (3-2-2 after Advanced Ecological Engineering). Weren't you more interested in minerals than labs?

(4) Given your preference for minerals over labs, removing the fungus from the mineral bonus, then building kelp farm and tidal harnesses will produce a 3-2-3 square. This will take (not counting transit turns) 6 turns to remove the fungus to produce a 1-2-0 square, 4 more turns to plant kelp to produce a 3-2-0 square and another 6 turns to build a tidal harness to produce a 3-2-3 square. If you worked on a kelp square, it would take 6 turns to change it from a 3-0-0 square to a 3-0-3 square. Note that a mining platform and kelp on the bonus mineral square would produce 3-3-0 (3-4-0 after Advanced Ecological Engineering).

(5) Something else to consider: we can build fungicidal formers which take half the time to clear fungus and cost 10 more minerals. I've edited my instructions to produce fungicidal sea formers instead of sea formers and for HQ ro produce a fungicidal former to send to Drydock.

[vyeh]

Re blood truce:

(1) We'd have to escort the sea colony pod anyway because of the Hive and mindworms (although if it is mindworms the northern hardened Drydock gun foil may be better than a hardened -- disciplined because it is a prototype and hardened because of monolith promotion - missile foil because the gun foil has had a great deal of luck).

(2) It looks like both the Spartans and we have surpassed the Gaians on the faction dominance bar chart. If we keep sinking sea colony pods and transports, the Spartans have a little bit of difficulty replacing them because of their 10% industry penalty.

(3) The Spartans and the Gaians have a pact, so they have access to tech through Deidre.

(4) We don't have enough units in the area to physically block the Spartans. The nightmare scenario is if they slip a probe team on a transport past our ships, land the probe team on our continent and steal Doctrine: Air Power from us. It would be aggravating if they landed a unit on our shores and interfered with our development. To protect against probe attacks and to increase our home defensive forces (we only have two recon rovers and a plasma sentinel besides a whole bunch of scouts) would cost more than enough additional forces to protect against the Spartans as well as the Hive (the territory is much closer to the Hive than it is to the Spartans).

(5) One strategic possibility open to us once we have a couple of missile foils is to attack Fleet Anchorage. It is a sea base, so it can be captured by a naval unit. Since it is a sea base only land units with amphibious abilities can attack it. If we capture it, it would an easy to secure base for our ships and needlejets.

[vyeh]

Lt. Bodissey,

You should be happy. Our might is now "unsurpassed." We're the "overall" leader. Our integrity is "noble."

However, it takes us 8 turns to research with the slider set to 100% labs. Deidre (30% econ/70% labs) and Morgan (30% econ/50% labs/20% psych) only take 5 turns and Zakharov (20% econ/60% labs/20% psych) takes 3 turns.

Mir Labs is producing the Hunter Seeker Algorithm. It will take 15 turns. If we plan to infiltrate the University, we should do so in the next 15 turns.

[Nahkrinoth]

I meant a tidal harness then kelp. Shouldn't we max out special resource bonus squares to whatever they produce? Tidal harness for energy, mining for minerals?

The reason I said the second sea former should plant kelp is that if we plant a few kelp spaced out early, it'll have a chance to spread on it's own and we won't have to plant it later.

Good idea on the fungicidal formers. We'll let the specialists do that job and work around them.

[vyeh]

Before Advanced Ecological Engineering, a tidal harness produces 3 energy and a mining platform produces 1 mineral. You can have one or the other, not both.

For a facility, 2 credits buys 1 mineral after 10 mineral has been accumulated. Assume we are working a 2-2-0 freshwater bonus mineral square. If we kelp mine it, we get 4-3-0. If we kelp tidal harness it, we get 4-2-3. We can spend 2 of the 3 energy (we are perfectly efficient and can move the slider to produce more credits from the energy we harvest) and purchase a mineral of a facility build.

So we get the mineral we lost by not having the mining platform and pocket an energy! Clearly the tidal harness better in our situation: before Advanced Ecological Engineering and with paradigm economy.

If you're crawling, maxing out the special resource squares makes more sense, but there may still be circumstances where you would prefer 3 energy to 3 mineral.

It probably makes sense for the first sea former for a base to be fungicidal and the second to be non-fungicidal.

[vyeh]

We've seen a Gatling Foil in the northern waters. We'll have to be careful to keep the plasma hoverboats paired with more powerful vessels. We'll also need to think about getting a missile foil into production. So HQ will build a crawler since crawlers can be cashed in for prototype builds. There is already an HQ crawler, so two crawlers will give us 60 minerals toward the 80 minerals needed for a (6)-3-4 deep radar missile skimship.

If we don't get some credits from planet pearls or a resupply pod, we might have to consider moving the slider to get some credits so we can hurry the network node or the missile skimship even at the price of delaying Doctrine: Air Power by a turn or two.

It is getting dangerous for our gun foils. They were always expendable. As long as all the pods are popped and the seas fully explored, it doesn't matter if we lose them all.

Similarly, the plasma hoverboats and plasma coastal are obsolete and need to be replaced.

BEFORE ENDING 2144:

(1) Move Seaview worker from 1-1-0 square to 1-2-1 forest.

(2) Move Suez worker from 2-2-0 square to 1-2-1 square (the additional nutrients would be lost when Suez produces a colony pod and goes from population 2 to population 1.

(3) Ushuaia trance scout infantry at East moves 2 sq. S, 1 sq. SE.

(4) Ushuaia trance rover supply outside Gibraltar moves into Gibraltar, re-homes, moves 1 sq. E and crawls 1 mineral for Gibraltar.

(5) HQ former 2 sq. SW of HQ changes from cultivating farm to planting forest (minerals are more important for Gibraltar).

BETWEEN 2144 AND 2145:

(6) If Miriam contacts us, we'll do a trade that does not involve Nonlinear Mathematics or Synthetic Fossil Fuels. We will not end our pact with Morgan. We won't give into extortion.

(7) East builds former. Switch to colony pod.

FOR 2145:

(8) Sunken City plasma hoverboat and Drydock plasma coastal move toward impact foil. We want to concentrate our forces.

(9) Gateway former cultivates farm.

(10) BRCM sea former moves 4 sq. SE.

(11) Suez former builds road.

(12) Seaview former 1 sq. SW of Seaview moves 1 sq. SE.

(13) Seaview former 1 sq. NW of BRCM builds solar collector.

(14) Gibraltar trance scout infantry at HQ monolith moves to East and hols.

(15) Gibraltar trance scout infantry at East goes to Suez.

(16) Ushuaia trance scout infantry 1 sq. NW of Ushuaia moves into Ushuaia and holds.

(17) East trance scout infantry at Ushuaia moves to Bay Area.

(18) Independent scout at Bay Area mvoes to East.

(19) East former at East moves 1 sq. S and plants forest.

(20) HQ trance scout infantry 2 sq. SW of HQ moves 1 sq. W.

(21) Ushuaia former (with movement point) builds solar collector.

(22) Drydock impact foil moves to Spartan waters.

(23) Western Bay Area gun foil moves to Manifold Nexus Central.

(24) South Drydock gun foil explores to the east.

(25) Eastern Bay Area gun foil pops pod and explores (remember not to pop pod in clear water without three movement points remaining).

(26) Mindworm on Gaian continent moves 1 sq. W and investigates monolith.

(27) IoD pops pod to east, moves 2 sq. E, loads mindworm and moves 1 sq. W.

(28) If IoD has not popped mindworm, northern Drydock gun foil moves 2 sq. E.

(29) Move Gibraltar worker from 3-0-0 sea kelp square to 1-2-1 forest square.

[vyeh]

Lt. Nahkrinoth,

Good point about the kelp spreading out. It will even eliminate fungus.

[vyeh]

With the appearance of the We're going to have to accelerate production of the missile skimship. I think that means hurrying the network node at Drydock, which means adjusting the social engineering slider if we don't harvest some planetpearls or find a resupply pod.

With the vendetta, the gun foils are very vulnerable in Believing waters, so we only move them there if there is something worthwhile (exploration or a pod).

The impact foil has the same armor as the plasma hoverboat, but it has a good chance of destroying the Gatling foil (note the Spartans now have plasma armor).

So if the Gatling foil is detected, we want to end up with the plasma hoverboat between the Gatling foil and the impact foil and the impact foil within three squares or less of the hoverboat. Do not end up on the same square. If the Gatling foil attacks the hoverboat, its turn will end. Then the impact foil can attack the Gatling foil.

Both a Believer sea colony pod and a transport foil! Good for the south Drydock gun foil!

The Recycling Tanks had 16 accumulated minerals. We don't switch when the accumulated minerals is over 10 since we will lose half of the excess minerals and the chance of a materials pod is low. Completing the Recycling Tanks is good.

[vyeh]

BEFORE ENDING 2145:

(1) Change HQ production to fungicidal former (we won't have the supply crawler finished in time to help Drydock build the missile skimship prototype).

(2) HQ former 2 sq. SW of HQ changes from cultivating farm to planting forest (minerals are more important for Gibraltar).

(3) Change East production to a colony pod (the nearby expansion site is almost ready).

(4) Hurry Drydock network node for 26 credits (partial payment).

(5) HQ scout at BRCM and independent scout at Seaview exchange places (independent scout is green).

(6) Ushuaia recon rover at Suez moves to East (to be able to get to BRCM when independent scout investigates monolith).

(7) Change Gateway former to building road (will build forest for more minerals for Gateway).

(8) Move Drydock plasma hoverboat blocking South passage to Believing waters to bonus energy square and hold (fungus square is partial deterrent; this prevents Believing boats from slipping by).

BETWEEN 2145 AND 2146:

(9) BRCM builds fungicical sea formers. Change to crawler.

(10) Drydock builds network node. Change to (6)-3-4 Deep Radar Missile Skimship.

(11) Gateway builds recycling tanks. Change to crawler.

(12) Western Bay Area gun foil moves toward Morgan Interstellar (with vendetta with Believers, these waters are too dangerous).

(13) Gateway former droid builds road.

(14) BRCM sea former moves to bonus mineral freshwater sea square and constructs tidal harness.

(15) Gateway trance scout at Suez and Suez scout at Gateway exchange places.

(16) Independent scout at East moves to HQ monolith and investigates.

(17) Gibraltar trance scout at East and East trance scout at Bay Area exchange places.

(18) Seaview former 1 sq. S of Seaview removes fungus.

(19) Ushuaia recon rover at East goes to BRCM.

(20) Independent scout at BRCM goes to HQ monolith and investigates it.

(21) HQ trance scout west of HQ holds.

(22) Bay Area former moves 1 sq. SW and builds mine.

(23) BRCM fungicidal sea former moves toward bonus nutrient freshwater sea square (to remove fungus).

(24) Drydock impact foil and Sunken City hoverboat patrol area between Blast Rifle Crag and Morgan Interstellar with hoverboat screening impact foil (with vendetta against Believers, we need to worry about Believers).

(25) Southern Drydock gun foil uncovers black squares, then moves into Budushii Dvor (it is protected inside the base).

(26) Change Gateway to trance rover supply. Eastern Bay Area gun foil pops pod and continues exploring westward following our rules.

(27) IoD moves 2 sq. NW, pops pod, then moves 2 sq. W.

(28) Northern Drydock gun foil explores following our rules (don't pop pod in clear water unless there are 3 movement points remaining). If there has been no materials pod, change Gateway back to supply crawler.

(29) Mindworm on Gaian continent moves 1 sq. NW, 1 sq. NE, 1 sq. SE.

(30) Move Gibraltar worker 2 sq. W by NW from base on 1-1-0 square to unworked 1-2-1 forest square.

[vyeh]

All of the foils lost were 20 mineral vessels. It would have been nice to have uncover the two black squares before the gun foils were destroyed, but they were intended to be expendable; on the plus side, Bay Area and Drydock just saw a one mineral boost to their production!

We do need to prototype a missile skimship and then start churning them out. If they travel in teams of 2 or 3 and we churn them out, we will rule the nearby waters.

Our IoD has a cargo capacity of 2 and we have three passengers. We can either have the mindworm on the Gaian continent travel south and pick off a Spartan non-combat unit or two or we can give it to the Gaians. What is your opinion?