ACDG6: Operations

[Hydro]

Wow, Lucky sure is lucky!

Consider sending a probe team instead of the scout since it has a move of two. That means it can jump back into the transport if worms are present and the team can move on with no harm. Sending the transport home for a new scout is time consuming. Plus, there is always the Probe Of Opportunity!

[vyeh]

It wasn't Lucky. It was the scout (Mutatio explorer) that we've tasked to popping land pods.

We sent the elite probe team toward Adonia to rendezvous with the transport foil.

[Hydro]

[QUOTE=vyeh;5531584]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).
QUOTE]

I continue to be surprised that we haven't gotten any worms or IoDs. In fact, I've generally left pods near but not adjacent to my bases intact into late early game or even mid game due to the threat of a nasty worm-infested pod. Maybe in other games I've popped so many pods that it seems the Worm Lotto is worse than it is.

[vyeh]

(1) We haven't popped that many pods. The aquatic factions beat us to a lot of sea pods. And the land pod near Genesis was investigated by the Ghost colony pod.

(2) Perhaps there is an effect beyond the base radius where the longer an area is developed, the less likely the effect of a mind worm.

Prima says regarding mindworms, "If this isn't the 'big mind worms' version, then the event is more likely to be ignored the nearer you are to a friendly base -- that is, chances of mind worm encounters increase the farther you are from a friendly base."

Although we haven't encountered mindworms in popping pods, we have encountered a couple of mindworms. The earthquake pod that made Virtual Ocean a land base (probably caused by the Consciousness) was a particularly bad piece of luck for us.

I went back to the start of 2149 and popped the pod 10 times. I didn't get a single mindworm, so I would estimate the probability of getting a mindworm to be no more than around 10%.

It may be that you remember the cases where a mind worm pop was disastrous, so you're overestimating the danger of mindworms.

We've been careful to pop pods that were close to our bases or where all we were risking was a cheap scout (GPS Lucky always popped pods with full movement remaining).

With your strategy of using an (elite) probe team to pop the pods on other continents or islands, we don't need to fear mindworms. If we get one, the probe team will jump back on the transport foil.

I think you're right to be cautious when a mind worm infestation would be disastrous. I suspect the incident of mind worm infestation depends on a lot of factors (including proximity to friendly bases).

I also thing that the odds change over time. Obviously you can only get a comm frequency if you don't have all of them. And tech seems to disappear later in the game. My experience is ACDG5 was that materials pod were more frequent later in the game. If we pop one of those nasty Battle Ogre Mark II, we may pay a visit to the Templar or the Cult!

[Hydro]

My observation is that on the rare instances when Ogre II were found is that fusion had been discovered by someone. I have no proof, of course, just a general gut feel.

[vyeh]

Current (2150) power graph:

[vyeh]

To illustrate the difference between unitary police state and unitary democracy, I repeated my moves assuming that we had not entered unitary police state.

Under unitary democracy in 2150:

tech breakthroughts 13 years; income 23 credits; mineral production 60 minerals

Under unitary police state in 2150:

tech breakthroughs 16 years; income 31 credits; mineral production 89 minerals

Difference in 2150:

tech breakthroughs lost of 3 years; income gain of 8 credits; mineral production gain of 29 minerals

Under unitary democracy with the addition of Guanino, no base worked more than 2 tiles. There were 10 doctors.

Under unitary police state, we had no doctors and two bases (Cytosino and Sands of Time) worked 4 tiles.

As the other bases grow to size 4, we should see more benefits from unitary police state.

[vyeh]

We're ready to build the weather paradigm next year. We could have done it this year, but that would have resulted in wasting 4 minerals and delayed getting enough crawlers to Mutatio for the command nexus.

I would propose we build the weather paradigm and wait on the command nexus until the Consciousness are within one year of building the command nexus. That way we benefit from the 2 minerals per crawler around Mutatio.

[Hydro]

A little risky, but sounds OK.

Those two radar supply crawlers certainly took the pressure off, and likely resulted in us getting WP, HGP, and CN - all highly valuable SPs. Now we'll have to see if we can snag a few more...

PS does look like a good SE for us right now. I'm glad we took the plunge.

[vyeh]

We know how far the Consciousness is.

Both GPS Lucky and our scout explorer have repaid themselves many times over. Remember that our spate of tech trades and sales was triggered by GPS Lucky encountering Elevea.

I'm pretty sure we will be able to snag more secret projects.

Give Mart credit for unitary police state.

His proposal to forget research would make sense if we were committed to running momentum. Then we could use our superior production to overwhelm Ghost, followed by the other factions and end up with a conquest victory.

However, I see the possibility of grabbing as many secret projects as possible followed by building formers, crawlers, recycling tanks, network nodes. Once we've accumulated a lot of credits, we could switch back to planned, pop boom and go for a diplomatic (through population growth), economic or transcendent victory. Any of these would need tech.

Although our support penalty makes a conquest victory harder, we can compensate through population growth.

Our economic penalty may make an economic victory harder, but again we can compensate through growth.

[vyeh]

Current (2151) power graph:

[vyeh]

We will build the weather paradigm at the beginning of 2152.

[vyeh]

Current (2152) power graph:


Consciousness has enough minerals to build the command nexus, so we will cash in our crawlers this year.

We built the weather paradigm.

[Mart]

It looks like Cycon (Consciousness) changed some SE and now they have 161/120 for The Command Nexus.
I guess Mutatio is scheduled to complete CN.
It looks like we need to cash all 7 crawlers, loosing 10 minerals (1 row), since they give 210 total. We seem to have no other choice at this time.

[vyeh]

Consciousness cashed in an alien artifact for 50 minerals. Their SE did not change.

We cash in one crawler, switch to network nodes, buy 12 minerals for 24 credits, cash in 5 crawlers.

Then 6 crawlers (180) + 12 minerals + 8 minerals production (6 from Mutatio workers + 2 from the Mutatio crawler, which is not cashed in) gives us the 200 we need.