ACDG6: Operations

[Mart]

The plan that I proposed is a whole thing for the next 10 years. There will be places we get losses, but overall gain is:
- 6 techs against 3 or 4 in dealings with Delan alone.
- 140 additional minerals. I agree 40 (80 EC) for switching to PS and back.

Why would you want to prevent applied plasma physics?

Because both Cycon and Ghosts have this tech. It is better to trade it from Cycon or probe it from Delan, who is seething towards us. We have almost accumulated 100% labs for a tech, let's use for something we cannot acquire in any other ways in this moment, like Know How: Sea Power for example.

Switching to police state costs 40 credits. Switching back would cost another 40 credits.

I took into account now, we have 140 minerals gain now, not 180.

Ghost now has +3 probe. I don't think the survival rate of a green probe foil would be high.

Isn't 87.5% to probe a base for a second tech high? I thought it is closer to 50%.

Yes, therefore we have 3 infantry probes, 20 minerals each. We would attempt 3 times to get one tech with it, so it comes from 50% chance to 87.5%, as I estimate. We would loose some of them or all, but it is worth like 40-60 minerals in my opinion. A tech is now around 400 labs for us.

If you probe Delan, he will declare vendetta. I think we would need more forces to defend our frontier bases and to attack Delan.

The proposed units are for probe task forces only. After that we would mix military, crawlers and formers.

Delan is seething, he may declare vendetta on us anyway. When probing him, we get technology gain and lead to solution of this situation on more on our terms. It is so close to our hq base, we could make him weaker sooner.

We don't want to get into a vendetta of attrition. Shadow Run is producing 16 minerals per year.

Our own production would be on the level of 100 per turn for the next 10 years. We would be better in production.

If Ghost have control of the seas, they can land 6-1-1 and 6-1-2 units on our coast and threaten our HQ.

We are going to have Command Nexus and can build military ourselves.

Delan can attack anyway and get us surppriesed. If we say, we will not attack Ghosts, that does not guaranty they will not threaten us.

I think before we are ready for a vendetta against the Ghost, we can research zero point energy on our own. The lifting of the energy restrictions will make it easier for us to pursue either development or conquest.

We would probe for Zero Point Energy. Delan has it. As soon as the conflict begins, we get this tech.

So my proposal would be:

(1) Leave economy/lab 50/50 since there is no lost to inefficiency and both getting to zero point energy and building secret projects is important.

I agree on better use of energy due to lack of inefficiency, but we do get Zero Point Energy from probing.
Secret Projects, we get, according to my estimate, both CN and WP within 5 turns from now. Within 10 years possibly one more, depending how much military we need.

...
When we engaged in a vendetta with the Templars, we had to give up formers and terraforming to finish the vendetta.

Templars can wait for now. They will probably not threaten us within 10 turns and cannot offer us 4 technologies now and 5 total within 10 turns, as Ghosts can.
... We now have enough formers to have decent terraforming rate. also we still can get few more, we have 14 bases after all.

It comes down to question if the benefits that I think this plan offers are worth the risk. There is a risk with probing Delan, it may turn out more difficult than I predicted. But read the plan, we could modify it still.
For example some option is to get only one probe foil, and probe two sea bases subsequently. Cheaper, but more risky. And other modifications.
In my opinion it is worth trying.

[Hydro]

Switching from Unitary Demo (-2 police, +1 Talent) to PS (+2 support to cancel out other penalties to zero support, +2 police) is a wash for social stability since we lose the Talent and need the military unity for stability. We’d need 2 or more units at a base (+2 police means we can use up to 3 military units as police) to benefit. But, having 2 military units washes out our support bonus (1 free support to 2 free support in PS). So, unless we plan on keeping our military units at home PS doesn’t do us much good, and it does get us -3 research. To me it seems only useful if we are using it short term as a builder or hybrid to get base stability under control (build RCs, holo theatres where needed).

On that line, running Plutocracy makes little sense if we’re going Blood Makes Grass Grow since it gets us -2 morale. It makes some sense if we’re using PS to bootstrap up to something else, though, since we wouldn’t care about morale. Plus, with free hatcheries (crèche) morale penalties at the base are nullified, making defense more palatable.

All I really care about right now is getting WP and if possible CN. After we get those under our belt our bases should be close to out-producing all the other factions in minerals, and with some terraforming cranking out energy too. We have lots of unimproved Jungle tiles that could get us more food and energy (farms/solar on rolling; forest on flat), so for me formers are key to both growth and production. Just look at what the AI has done with their bigger bases (AI cheating aside) and it is clear what some decent terraforming will do.

With 14 bases time is on our side. Getting SPs that get us free facilities is outstanding, and increased terraforming is always good. We need to bootstrap, and after that we can deal with pesky Ghosts and Templar.

I'll leave the detailed analysis to you gents. Frankly I don't generally analyze that much!

[Mart]

Unless we have more input from yet other players, Vyeh as the turnplayer you can decide how to proceed. The decision is yours.

[vyeh]

We should hesitate to enter into a new vendetta until

(1) we grab as many secret projects as we can;

(2) we are no longer "behind" in our development; and

(3) we have sufficient military forces.

One advantage of completing research on applied plasma physics is the supercollider.

I believe that by the time we're ready for a vendetta with Delan, we will have accumulated enough labs for zero point energy, so any strategy of wasting energy credits through inefficiency to keep the accumulated minerals only means that we had to build some unnecessary probes.

My general inclination is tech is important; however, unitary police state has two benefits. It increases our support and it allows the garrisons that we already keep to protect our bases mindworms to suppress a drone.

[vyeh]

In 2147, we changed to unitary police state politics.

Although we lost a talent in switching from unitary democracy to unitary police state, we more than made up for it when the garrison we kept in each base suppressed a drone.

In particular, Cytosino and Faralia were able to turn their doctors into workers.

I believe this is due to the fact that the +1 talent only changes a bureaucracy drone ("double red") into a regular drone. Then the recreation commons acts on two drones, whether bureaucracy or regular, and turns them into workers.

So in the case of Cytosino, which started with 3 bureaucracy drones, the talent turned a bureaucracy drone into a regular drone and the recreation commons suppressed two drones, leaving us with two workers and a drone, which is a riot situation. And the rejuvenation tanks did not turn any worker into a talent. It acted as if it changed a bureaucracy drone into a regular drone before the recreation commons took effect.

In contrast, Genesis started with 1 regular drone and 2 bureaucracy drones. The talent turned a bureaucracy drone into a regular drone. And the recreation commons turned two drones into workers, leaving us with two workers and a drone. And the secret project turned a worker into a talent, leaving us with a talent, a worker and a drone, which is not a riot situation.

When we switched to unitary police state, the recreation commons turned two drones into workers, the garrison turned the third drone into a worker and the secret project turned one of the workers into a talent in both Cytosino and Genesis.

If Cytosino can have one talent, two workers and one drone at size 4 under unitary police state, then we will gain two more worked squares over unitary democracy.

Although I am not sure whether we would ever make up the research hit from extra worked squares (and we have no doctors at this point), I think we can afford to trade off some (but no more) research for the minerals freed up from support and from extra worked squares.

We'll make up the 40 credits upheaval cost after 2 years.

I suggest we look at possibly switching out of unitary police state after we've completed several more secret projects.

[vyeh]

Current (2148) power graph:

[Hydro]

You've confirmed what I suspected: PS may be a decent intermediate step, a breather to get our house in order (under a jack boot!).

I agree - PS until we get the SPs done and can get other improvements in order. By then our growth potential will kick in and (if needed) we can finish our business with the Templar and maybe the Ghosts.

[Mart]

Our effective production in all bases is now 79 minerals. With 30 EC, that gives us 94/turn when hurrying. 3 crawlers. It should increase with produced crawlers, unless we make more energy or nutrients. We have capacity to get 4 population in bases with this SE. However when switching out from PS we will need probably psych allocation. Might work if we have energy restrictions lifted.
------------
Overall, it looks very good. We can get an SP every few turns. I wonder what Cycon will finally get. If we get WP, CN, will they aim for Supercollider?

[vyeh]

Tech Choice between MY 2148 and MY 2149

Between 2148 and 2149, we will discover applied plasma physics.

We started with Biogenetics.

We will have researched Centauri Ecology, The Exowomb, Polymorphic Software, Renewable Energy Sources, Military Know-how, Gene Splicing and Applied Plasma Physics.

We received from Delan Centauri Hydrology and Information Networks.

We received from Aki Zeta-5 Industrial Base, The Fission Reactor and Military Doctrine.

We received from Elevea Ecological Engineering, Industrial Automation and Xenobiology.

We recovered from a data pod Social Psych.

We stole from Silvera Field Modulation, High Intensity Lasers and Mechanical Resonance.

What are our choices for the next tech?

Which techs do we have the research prerequisites for?

Tech (Conquer/Discover/Build/Explore) t

Long Range Missiles (C) 8
Nanotube Mass Production (C) 9
Zero Point Energy (D) 12
Know-how: Sea Power (E) 35
Know-how: Air Power (C) 39
Secrets of the Human Brain (D) 48
Environmental Economics (B) 59
Retroviral Geneering (B) 76
Progenitor Psych (E) 78

Following the procedure:

n = 20
s = 1
b = 1 (the trade with Aki-Zeta 5 hasn't reset the counter)

Tech (Conquer/Discover/Build/Explore) t, n + t + s - b

Long Range Missiles (C) 8, 28
Nanotube Mass Production (C) 9, 29
Zero Point Energy (D) 12, 32
Know-how: Sea Power (E) 35, 55
Know-how: Air Power (C) 39, 59
Secrets of the Human Brain (D) 48, 68
Environmental Economics (B) 59, 79
Retroviral Geneering (B) 76, 96
Progenitor Psych (E) 78, 98

The joker tech is the Explore tech nearest the beginning of the list, know-how: sea power.

Since retroviral geneering has a value of t+n+s-b that is divisible by 3, it will not be available.

So we will be asked to choose from (ordering by ascending explore techs, then ascending discover techs, then ascending build techs and finally ascending conquer techs) know-how: sea power, progenitor psych, zero point energy, secrets of the human brain, environmental economics, long range missiles, nanotube mass production and know-how: air power.

[Hydro]

If we get HGP, WP and CN I will be happy. For others I like PEG since it gives all bases the benefit of an energy bank. Supercollider is good, but is only truly effective if you create a super lab/energy base and that will take some time (need to be a hybrid or perhaps a builder to make it pay).

Spending time in PS to bootstrap and capture SPs seems like a good idea. Then our production can really start to tip the balance.

[vyeh]

In the long run, unitary police state may be better than unitary democracy. Under unitary democracy, it appears Cytosino can only work two squares. Under unitary police state, Cytosino can work four squares.

It seems that even though the manual and the display screen shows the rejuvenation tanks taking effect after recreation commons, that if one of the drones suppressed by the recreation commons was a bureaucracy drone, then the rejuvenation tanks does not create a talent.

To get both weather paradigm and command nexus, we might have to build command nexus first. I believe that the Consciousness will switch to polymorphic defense system since it is also a militarily oriented secret project.

In addition to planetary energy grid, we should also look at vitro fertilization center (PTS).

My list is now:

rejuvenation tanks (HGP), which we've built
weather paradigm
command nexus
planetary energy grid
vitro fertilization center (PTS)
polymorphic def sytem (CDF)
echelon mirror park (ME)
supercollider

[vyeh]

Current (2149) power graph:

[Hydro]

The psych screen is always a bit of a challenge to parse out. You could be right, but I have to think that a drone is a drone (unless it is a double drone!).

[vyeh]

Bureaucracy drones are double drones.

[vyeh]

We recovered another materials pod. This confirms my experience in ACDG5 that materials pods seems more likely later in the game (perhaps because comm frequencies and techs no longer occur).

This gave Darwin 130 minerals in the form of a radar rover supply.

Since we should have no trouble building both the weather paradigm (at Cytosino with Darwin radar rover supply, Aurora supply and Cytosino supply) and the command nexus (at Mutatio with 2 Purini supply, Mutatio supply, Uracil supply, Cytosino supply and Genesis supply) at the beginning of 2153 (one year before the Consciousness is scheduled to build the command nexus), we are building a transport foil at Adonia to pick up Mutatio explorer and pop some more pods.