It is a pretty OP, OP.

so, how fast can we make nukes on rysix? oh the irony.

and we also need bro-bots, a couple dozen tanks with working gates and inties patrolling on risyx, or its orbit. shit we still dont have precise bombing.

btw im gettin the feeling we may be able to "salvage" the druids on "old monument".

and last, ed, what abbout workforce? will they work for us? can we buy land on their planet?

the op pic is indeed very missing a blue/orange gradient

I hope The End starts back up soon, as much as charts and graphs and numbers excite me.

>NEURAL IMPLANTS: Allows implants to be placed directly in the central nervous system. These will increase learning speed and memory. Further research can allow them to do more.

so we can get implants to have the whole trainning?

GE IV here we go!

>>324611
dude, the dryads at new monument found something and had a crisis of faith. 'salvaging' them would be the most dumbass thing you could do, considering that they are most likely closer to being on our side then the regular ones.

>>324616
well, we can get the research done with only 10. and if you think their lords will leave them alone you are quite wrong.

atheism is heresy there. they may start this war because there is now the risk we may turn dryads into atheists.

we should get diplomacy with them. there is now the possibility we can get a friendly dryad government to speak with, even if just to protect them.

>>324617
then don't say 'salvage' that sounds like you are going to kill them.

>>324618
naw i just want to grant them political asylum and then alliance citizenship and then educate them to make them work for us.

>>/quest/170110
welli am considering they have means to take out the inties, maybe even the space vessels.

we should alos start arming irontown as well, its possible they may teleport there.

I'm betting the dryads are in upheaval because of simple tools making life easier (thus irritating the peasantfolk, who can't use magic but happily take full advantage of the tech devices) and/or they discovered the history stuff that was dug up.

>>324624
by the setting description, every dryad can use some sort of magical spell.

i have been wondering, and its possible they are going trhu a renaiscance or maybe just learning that tech = magic in utility means

then this would be the first Renaissance since the beginning of the race. they have been stuck at medieval tech for who knows how long?

>>324641
we have to prevent the equivalent of a spanish inquisition from setting in. i want to do diplomacy real bad, but we offered everything for the dryad and they refused it, even when we said we could cover the desert with terraplants.

>>324648
well, the radicals may now be open to diplomacy. if the regular ones hate our guts then the radicals must at least hate us less.

>>324649
problem is, if we even talk to them we may be getting a huge bullzeye on them as well.

There's not much that can really be done in this situation. Unless we decided to be complete jerks, do some espionage, figured out what was really causing the rebellion... and then spreading around the people/information.

Ed you should update Antisex Quest too.

...damnit, now I am stuck imagining how these two quests are going to cross-over. CURSE YOUR TITLE GRAPHIC!

>>>/quest/206233
Ha ha. Serves them right.

How much RP are Fusion Casters, by the way?

>>329428
THIS IS SO WRONG.

BUT IT FEELS SO RIGHT.

ITS LIKE DR. MENDELES AND HITLER BECAMED POWER RANGER VILLAINS AND FINALY MANAGED TO KILL ZORDON. EXCEPT ZORDON WAS EVIL AND HAD 5 STICKS UP OTS BUTT.

There was a lot of discussion in the previous thread about genetic engineering possibilities. Not to revive that long-running argument, but would it be possible to get people who are all-around better (in at least some of faster learning, more creative, better senses, stronger, better reflexes, etc.) and as the downside simply make them eat way more? I'm talking at least two, three times as much- the logic being that as long as they can keep their crazy metabolism fueled, they can perform at much higher specs than standard humans. Of course, if they don't eat way more then they starve to death in short order where anyone else would just grumble about being on half rations.

We'd need significantly better farming technology to shift over any large percentage of our population to this kind of design, but we probably could get at least a few boosted people this way.

5Copper!OcWN4aulz6 2010/07/12(Mon)18:28 No. 19726 ID: e5b19f
File 127898450953.png - (60.97KB , 400x400 , I SAD.png )

>>329523
there is NO adhuman.

there is NO supertech.

its all realistic even exchanges. we cant enhace them without a equally horrible drawnback, plus producing costs and limitations.

>>329526
he gave a draw back, cripplingly high metabolism. maybe once we unlock the secrets of magic we may be able to do something crazy. the druids are as strong as minor cyber enhanced people without any clear drawback because they are magic enhanced.

Hey, in regards to Commando training in The Icon, is there any way we can reduce fatalities? Also, can we give Commandos strength upgrades? :D

>>329553
i belive the answers are no and yes, but implants by themselves have a fatality rate.

>>/quest/207167
>It's like blowing up your house to get at a rat.
Nah. It's more like setting someone's back yard on fire to kill a rat. Someone we don't like. Also, the rat is killing people that take four years to train and we only have twenty, whoops, seventeen of.

>Why insist on using fire, in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, on a vastly forested part of the world?
Jungles are really hard to set on fire. Sure, the parts we drop bombs on, and the immediate surroundings, will burn down, but it's unlikely to turn into a firestorm, due to all the moisture. Also, the fact that trees here are enormous. (Which is why I vote we use napalm in the first place. It splashes through cover.) Also, the commandos are probably miles from the village they were trying to visit.

I acknowledge that nuking the Dryads has cost us goodwill with the rebels, but given the Totus images they were drawing, they were probably calling for offworld help, so... too bad. Better safe and unpopular than very briefly sorry followed by death.

In my opinion, if we keep being scary, friendly towards the rebels, and arbitrarily powerful, responding to every setback with overwhelming force, they'll probably eventually decide they should ally with us. Also, if we genuine support a popular cause. That part's important.

Fighting Vietnam is only a doomed cause if you play the role of occupier. If we play the role of, say, Russia, it can work out quite well.


>Hey, in regards to Commando training in The Icon, is there any way we can reduce fatalities?
More genetic engineering. I'm more concerned with the four year(!) training time, myself.
>Also, can we give Commandos strength upgrades? :D
Yes, but there's a significant fatality rate. I was hoping to research better technology to give the commandos the high-level space marine upgrade without heavy casualties. But... now they're taking casualties for no benefit at all. Whoops!

>>329562
to be frank, i regret taking that suggestion. it all happened so fast, i would have surely devolved into a huge post about the use of nukes before saying to use it.

we can argue with the rebels. so far the actual good point of the nuke is that we actualy got only military units dead, we exausted diplomatic means before using it and we prevented our own civilian in ryx to face battle or worse.

>In my opinion, if we keep being scary, friendly towards the rebels, and arbitrarily powerful, responding to every setback with overwhelming force, they'll probably eventually decide they should ally with us. Also, if we genuine support a popular cause. That part's important.
id say we are half way from scaring them shitless to become their own side. we kinda need to rethink the use of the nuke and try to be reasonable with them. they have sensitive data that we can use to burn down JUST what we need instead of everything.

if we DO waste their planet, they wont ally with us. oh we should offer them that terraforming grass for the desert, im not sure they will like but it gives them a good idea that we can undo the damage done. also ask for them to keep samples of the forest for later regrowth.

Unless we redirect an asteroid or something, we can't "waste their planet," even if we want to.

And, undo what damage? We just nuked lifeless desert. Well, lifeless other than the mages.

Clearly, if they don't want to ally with us, then allying with us would be a very unpopular move. So we just need to sit back, keep offering support if they want it, in whatever form they'd be willing to accept, and keep setting people who fuck with us on fire.

>Unless we redirect an asteroid or something, we can't "waste their planet," even if we want to.
>And, undo what damage? We just nuked lifeless desert. Well, lifeless other than the mages.
we are about to show them the wonder of napalm on their forests. it wont go to a firestorm, but its unlikely many forests and animal life wont simply disapear.

also remember of their prophecy regarding us and magic. we may just make that happen accidentaly.

>but its unlikely many forests and animal life wont simply disapear.
Some close air support is not going to destroy "many forests."

It might destroy "some trees," and maybe that will make the locals unhappy (because I guess twenty billion acres of forest just isn't enough) but that's just the cost of doing business.

Respondin' a bit to events in the current main thread.

>>207201

Firstly, trying to terrorize religious/ideological factions that are heavy on dogma/fanaticism (on their own turf to boot) into meekness has turned out to be somewhat ineffective in the past, hasn't it? Likely, such opposition will only stiffen necks and justify their actions to those who might be in doubt about them.

Secondly, have you heard the adage "The enemy of my enemy?"

Isn't there a danger that we'll, in making ourselves appear big and threatening and vengeful, end up making enemies of some (or even all) of THOSE as well?

I mean, do we, or don't we, want to make friends with the rebels? If we DO, then what measures should be taken to assure that we DO get on their good side? The nuke strike certainly put them aback a bit, if our recent contact was any indication. What would napalm bombing (and its possible fiery repercussions) do?

I'm worried that rather than having any effect, we're setting ourselves up for more of a bloodbath. By being seen to 'fulfill' the mystics' prophecy (remember the one? About shredding forests, murdering countless people and animals?), some rebels might become inclined to think that the nobles are correct about us and that we and our technology are wicked by nature...A notion we might want to disabuse them off lest they re-join forces with the nobles and mystics, yes?

We can try to use superior technology and threats to keep the Dryads in line, and perhaps it will succeed. Certainly judicious usage of force multipliers like orbital lances, nukes, carpet bombing and napalm bombs, and a proven willingness to use them, will increase the odds of it doing so. That said, I dare say such a grip on the Dryads will be weak. There's simply too much ground to cover. Magic will also be an equalizer. As I mentioned earlier, this strike force could have teleported in from elsewhere, and the village close by could truly be neutral.

Really. When we're barely past 14K people and the 'enemy' potentially number in the millions, saying you don't want to make friends is tantamount to saying you don't want to breathe.

You can try all you want, but unless you're willing to go to extreme lengths to meet that goal, you're gonna end up doing it anyway.

THIS is why I want to head off the napalm strikes, unless that turns out to be the #1 workable strategy. Even so, I'd still care how we treat the dryads and what impressions we give them of ourselves.

agree. we want the rebels to understand that we are good people, even if vastly more powerful then them.

>>329568
for them it does not matter if we destroyed a few trees or a whole forest in our defense.

we destroyed trees. this is in the end all they care to.

>54af1f sez: "We shouldn't let them think they can get away with attacking us and walk away intact. Thus we should flatten them as they retreat."

1) But they didn't walk away intact. Their -reinforcements- walked away intact, when they -didn't- engage. This might be a lesson we want to let linger.

2) It is my opinion that if we ever want to be looked upon with something other than suspicion, hatred and distrust by the Dryad people (including rebels), then we have to apply carrot as well as stick. Too much stick and we leave an impression that may never wash off. Do we really want Totus to keep manipulating this people or can we teach them a way out of this non-evolutionary hole they're in?

3) Orbital bombardment could be a good ace up our sleeve... if they're not expecting it. If this is mainly a revenge action, then we shouldn't use it. Sure, losing four commandos stings, but that's as much our fault for being incautious as it is theirs. Or mine, if you'd prefer.

4) If you want a solid threat that we can bully the Dryads with, I think the suggestion that we can replicate the A-bomb attack pretty much anywhere on Grezt, if sufficiently pushed, should be enough.

>>329798
1: They're hostile. Just cause they're running doesn't mean they won't be hostile next time. Leaving them alive just leaves them to learn.

2: I'm all for Carrots if we can find them, but we're not talking about waterboarding prisoners or killing off a village here. These are warriors. Retreating, but still warriors.

3: This isn't really about revenge, its about destroying a bunch of guys who attacked us so they can't attack us again. Also, if they develop counters to air they'll really have a ready made counter to orbital too,

4: The idea is not really to bully them, it's just to kill any who attack us.

I guess I feel like some of you are coming at this wrong. We need to do this the Machiavelli way: We want to be feared, though not hated. We shouldn't be bombing towns or whatever, but any military unit that attacks us we should wipe out, even if they attempt to disengage.

>>329803
I endorse this post.

I'm not really seeing where other guys are coming from. It's a war. If people attack you, you kill them. You don't just spook them and hope they don't do it again.

The more of them we leave alive, the faster they'll learn how to better fight us.

>>329804
it's not about that it's about collateral damage. will the rebels want to join us if cause wanton destruction for the smallest slight? orbital bombardment would be good for when we join the rebels and they tell us where the loyalist main base is and just blow that up.

>>329804

As a way to think of it: Don't imagine you're the hero. Imagine you're the evil overlord. That's the closest I can come to our situation now. They're the scrappy rebels with magical powers and environmentalism, we're the evil aliens.

I don't necessarily mean we're evil evil (I'm not advocating us genociding them or anything) but in terms of situation we're most like an Evil Empire here, we have super weapons of various kinds, and troops who can beat all but the few plucky heroes (who we haven't met yet thankfully).

On every evil overlord list I know it says something about "Don't let your enemy run away" we should follow this advice.

>>329807

Honestly, wanton destruction is the price we pay for our massive firepower advantage. We already napalmed them, I don't see a orbital strike adding too much of a problem.

>>329807
If we're going to enforce a "no destroying any trees at all" rule, then we're going to need to stop operating anywhere outside our desert island. Just gonna sit back and wait for them to attack us.
I'm completely serious. Sending light infantry into a planet-sized jungle filled with dangerous megafauna and hundreds of millions of hostile superhumans, with no armor, orbital, or air support is a death sentence. We'd save time and fuel by just executing our own troops.

>>329807
That is some extremly simplified thinking. We're fighting an entire planet here. The rebellion is probably just a local occurence at this point, while the loyalists still control pretty much the entire land surface of the planet (except for our desert). There's not going to be some loyalist mainbase we can destroy. Even if we destroyed the 25 main cities in the loyalist hands we would just have made a small dent in their power. Because they control the entire freaking planet.

We're not going to win this by playing nice. We have to make sure that their warriors piss themselves at the mere thought of going within sight of us and that we have won every battle before it starts on the psychological plane. One way to do that is by being utterly ruthless and make every attack seem like an overpowering juggernaut that crushes anything and everything in its way.

I'm all for killing them, but I don't think you're going to strike much fear into a bunch of religious fanatics.

>>329823
Depends a bit on how strong believers they are and if they feel like they're accomplishing anything. If they know that any attack on us is certain death that will result in nothing beneficial for their side, then we can probably make a decent amount of them think twice.

We can put fear into them unless they're so utterly brainwashed that no external stimuli will stay their hand.

And if they ARE that brainwashed, then that's not a very good reason to hold back.

A minor point on tactics: As I understand it, our commandos excel at offensive and covert operations, but are not really that much better than our other available infantry when it comes to defensive actions. In situations like the conflict that just finished, it's a waste to have our commandos acting as the primary combatant force. We should use other infantry for escorts, and just send one or two commandos in case they have need of someone sneaky.

we need to think in foreign policies.

first, we should not peform genocide nor destroy (completely) natural resources. civilians should have a way to survive this mess, rebels or not.

second, backup armies are still armies. its not honorable to attack a fleeing enemy, but its also not honorable to flee from battle.

we should wound them, leaving wounded behind is a sure way to make them waste resources to get them alive.

>>329823
we already did that. they retreated from a few men and almost no bombs left.

>>329831
the idea behind commandos was that we had a very good way of keeping the convoy to a minimun, infrantry wise. i do admit we did a mistake because we lost commandos. we should make a small set of power infantry + anti armor options for the convoys.

>>329803

One hath tryed, and evidently failed. Couple of quick points, though.

-Potential carrot: Continue to prove we're not the wicked evil thingamajings, thirsting to shred trees, slay millions, kill magic itself, etc. that the dryad mystics predicted we would be, and are trying to make us to be.

-Why not just bomb them s'more with the Interceptors, if this is so important? Should be more accurate and less damaging, if anything.

>Machiavelli way.

Machiavelli also said it was better to be loved than feared.

Seriously, don't get me wrong. I get you guys' thinking, or at least I think I do. Annihilate enemy forces in order to make attacking an entirely hopeless prospect, gain fearsome reputation, and Brom's your uncle.

Though we do have fanatics and magic and aliens, oh my, which does make for a merry muddle of potential reactions and counter-tactics.

>>329804

Might I suggest you read C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series, Test?

We should still try to make friendly contact with willing dryads (if only because they can tell us what the heck is going on). Unfortunately, that is something that will become harder to do when the death count is racking up and we're being further demonized (and contributing to that demonizing ourselves).

We aren't even sure who we're fighting per se (it's clearly not 'everyone', since there apparently are both rebels and neutral factions) or why the mages decided to start pressing the issue after the commoners rebelled, or why the commoners DID rebel...

>>329809

Our 'enemy' could be the magocracy, not necessarily the rank and file soldiery or Dryads.

Our 'war' with the Dryads started over our right to stay on this planet, as contested mainly by the mystics and mages.

>Orbital strike compared to napalm.

Destruction on a scale of magnitude up a level, particularly when talking about taking out an entire area.

>>329811

Fie, Test. None of us ever suggested we should use our troops like that, and there are certainly better ways to deploy them if we have to use them as ground forces in a jungle war. BRIC support comes to mind.

Your advice regarding future away mission team troop dispositions and vehicles is noted, Test, and probably wise. Note that I'm not any happier about the commando losses than you are, presumably less so, because it's essentially my fault for suggesting it. That said, I will not let it discourage me from making suggestions and supporting ideas I think are good.

And just for posterity, I never specified a flight route of the commando teams. I just had the impression (unwarranted) that in order to get in touch with the rebels, we needed to inflitrate into some kind of rebel camp, or city under siege or something, but it seems the dropships simply took our guys thereabouts and around, making contact no problem.

>>329812

See, I disagree.

We're not 'fighting an entire planet' per se (it probably helps we don't have any continent bases). If it really was THAT bad, I'd suggest we pull out of here and leave them to their devices. You're forgetting about the mentioned neutrals, and it's not like they're all that united. They have seperate kingdoms everywhere.

>>329831
Let's only send out Commandos if we have an actual job for them. If the dudes we send out find a need for a commando mission, we can send out Commandos in a helicopter. It only takes a few hours.

>>329836
>civilians should have a way to survive this mess
Short of diverting an asteroid or something, we can't exterminate these guys even if we wanted to. It'd take thousands of nukes.

>we should make a small set of power infantry + anti armor options for the convoys.
Let's just use strength-enhanced infantry. They're just as mobile as regular ones and can carry heavier guns and armor.

On that note, let's make sure to enhance the clones we're making. They have a lower death rate that way.

>>329837
>-Potential carrot: Continue to prove we're not the wicked evil thingamajings
Carrot means a reward for them, not for us.

>Machiavelli also said it was better to be loved than feared.
No. That's not true. He said it's better to be feared than loved.

>Might I suggest you read C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series, Test?
Dude, I'm not gonna read twelve fantasy books to help you prove a point.

>Destruction on a scale of magnitude up a level, particularly when talking about taking out an entire area.
It's just some trees. Orbital lances aren't nukes.

Anyhoo. It probably doesn't matter. The battle is 'resolved,' which means the next update will (probably) be three game months from now.

>>329837

Actually he said that it was safer to be feared than loved and you should be feared not hated. Hence no civilian villages.

As for why not use interceptors? Because it'll take longer to get them on station. An Orbital strike is so much more immediate.

in spite of Machiavelli saying that it is indeed better to be loved. why would someone betray those they love?

>Might I suggest you read C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series, Test?
Finding those books online was a total bitch. Of course, that was some time ago, now... worth a read, although they can be frustrating at times. Watching the main character evolve into someone hyper-competent is entertaining, even if it takes like six books.


Anyway, guys. Do we know where another jump icon is, for the next time we need to flee? If not, we should look for it; if so, we should explore the other side. Since hostilities have broken out with at least some of the natives here, we have to assume that they'll be in contact with the other slave races somehow and report our presence. It might be paranoid, but I'd like to get started on an escape plan.

Also, the big difference between us and the humans in foreigners is we have a potentially overwhelming military, not just technical edge.

>>329843

Maybe so, but we have no way to make the natives love us, but a very effective way to make them fear us.

>>329843
>why would someone betray those they love?
I'm glad you asked! Here is the full quote:

"Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails." -Machiavelli

>>329847
....the fuck? i have no fucking clue what that means, it makes no sense. can you break it down into more understandable segments?

>>329849
Sure. Anyone else, feel free to dispute my rephrasing.


If you want to know if it's better to be feared then loved, here's the answer.

(Obviously you want both, but that's kind of hard.)

The important thing to remember is that people are fickle; they love winners and hate losers.

If they love you, then they'll be willing to abandon you when you're down and need their help.

If they fear you, then even when you're in trouble, they won't be willing to betray you because they'll know that you'll remember and take vengeance.

-Machiavelli as rephrased by me.


That work for you?

>>329851
i would like to bring in the episode of avatar 'the boiling rock'. where mai betrayed azula because she loved zuko more then she feared azula.
a mother would not abandon her child no matter what, would face death before that. obviously Machiavelli only saw superficial love, not true love.

>>329854
I'd like to bring up an episode of DBZ where Goku punched through a planet after screaming for three episodes.

>>329854
I have not seen that show, but it sounds like a classic case of insufficiently applied fear to me.

In the situation you posit, what is our objective? The easy way to make such a mother work for you is to ensure that if she doesn't, her child suffers. The easy way to get her not to object to your taking the child away is to display greater power than she has and establish the child's death as the only other available option. Machiavelli knew what the hell he was talking about.

I'm not saying that the full Machiavellian route is the right one for us to take in-game here, but saying that the guy's arguments are based upon flawed premises will take a lot more backup than a cartoon and a romanticized statement. Machiavelli's advice does not lead to being a nice guy, but it does lead to being an effective one. The real problem for our implementing it is that we're in a position far removed from what it was meant for.

>>329854
Don't be ridiculous. How do you propose to make the natives love us as a mother loves their child?

You cannot.

Political leaders, no matter how skilled, beneficent, or successful, do not command that type of loyalty from the general populace.

Also, that was just a cartoon. Machiavelli uses evidence from history. Again, of political leaders, not of inapplicable relationships.

"Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that having led an enormous army, composed of many various races of men, to fight in foreign lands, no dissensions arose either among them or against the prince, whether in his bad or in his good fortune. This arose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, but without that cruelty, his other virtues were not sufficient to produce this effect. And shortsighted writers admire his deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal cause of them. That it is true his other virtues would not have been sufficient for him may be proved by the case of Scipio, that most excellent man, not of his own times but within the memory of man, against whom, nevertheless, his army rebelled in Spain; this arose from nothing but his too great forbearance, which gave his soldiers more licence than is consistent with military discipline. For this he was upbraided in the Senate by Fabius Maximus, and called the corrupter of the Roman soldiery." -Machiavelli

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince17.htm Here's the whole chapter. It's really short!

>Short of diverting an asteroid or something, we can't exterminate these guys even if we wanted to. It'd take thousands of nukes
jesus, its not like that. if they hide in urban enviroment of course we will have a hard time facing them, but we should allow a nation to come forth and say "we want nothing of this mess" in order to claim neutrality.

in fact someone raised a good point. if we kill the rulers its possible we could get a revolution in the country going, plus, some of these countries already hate each other. we can try yo play that as well.

>Let's just use strength-enhanced infantry
how are they called? °3°

>>Potential carrot: Continue to prove we're not the wicked evil thingamajings
>Carrot means a reward for them, not for us.
assuming we somehow can make it work even tho we nuked them and now started napalming some of their forests, it should be a even exchange, even if it is a very long term exchange.

>Orbital lances aren't nukes.
and they arent reusable! each strike wears the guns, i dont wanna discover that we cant use them later on because we abused them now.

they "fear" the nuke, lets keep playing them with bombs.

>>329849
people arent virtuous enought to sustain the love. they betray who they love because eventually it pays off.

if they fear, they obey and stay in line because they fear punishment. this is somewhat feminist, as it assumes there will be no uprising.

quite frankly, this matter is irrelevant. what we immediately need is a somewhat sustainable neutrality from the planet's main race to us in order to bookworm against psycholord, with or without their help. if they fear us, small uprisings will always happen and we may not get part of their government to join us (well, id like to discuss this part althogether later on) plus if we become weakened, its possible they could set the last nail on the coffing.

if we are to play this right, some druid should hate psycholord enought to join us for a possible uprising against him. i know we may succeed with the lower class, wich is why it could be a good idea to murder the ruler class.

well then we should be feared and loved. fear us as enemies and love us as allies. going against us will be insane and joining us would be so glorious.

>>329861
>and they arent reusable! each strike wears the guns
That was only a concern early in the quest, because we didn't have any superconductors to repair them with. Now we have lots. In fact, we built three entirely new ships armed with rail lances!

>>329857
>>329860
>>329854
id like to point out every god dammed MMO guild/clan that had a uprising in their guild ranks because their underlings were under apreciated, and that this is a quest made by only one dude that got inspired in a reclusive anonimous board in the interbutts. seriously, this is not srs bnsns.

more specifically, BoB lost 8 trillion isk and a bit more in ships to a director that felt "unloved" by his peers, thats about 24k bucks in game money and over 8 years of hard work. i am a experienced MMO player and have quite a lot of tales involving backstabbing and betrayal in and out of guild.

being a dick pays, being feared pays, being trusted pays, being honest pays, being rewardful pays, being greedy pays, being prepared pays, being violent pays.

any sucess on archieving a goal is dictated by your skill in using any means you choosed and the situation you are facing.

>>329863
so there is no actual downtime needed to peform the repair?

>>329862
that sounds psychotic. pity the orb isnt there, it would be tottaly in character.

also take note that being feared may cause separatists inside the splinter.

>>329863
Speaking of building new ships... can we research larger ship designs? If we could create a ship which can contain a large building, it would be a huge step toward freeing our populace from this settle-then-migrate existence. I'd really like to eventually move to an entirely nomadic society, with all the buildings that we really need installed in our starships.

>>329866
let's get a ship that can contain MASSIVE buildings in them. best bet would be to take the building, armor it and slap thrusters to the back.

>>329866
we are making the equivalent of destroyers and cruisers. we have the tecnology to make battleships and carriers, but it takes too long to produce one. about 5 years i think?

>also take note that being feared may cause separatists inside the splinter.
Says you! The general populace hated the Dryads before we found out they were allied with the guys who blew up Earth.
If word's gotten out about that, they're probably baying for blood.

>>329872
advanced nano-construction would be great. and in space it wouldn't result in gray goo. just get all the material needed into a blob and then hose it down with nanobots. they transform it into what we said and viola, ship.

>>329876
Well that seems simple all we need to do is invent magical nanites that can do anything.

>>329877
well we are researching magic now :awesome:

Touche.

>>329872
Can we haul partially constructed ships along with us when we relocate, or do we have to live in the same spot for more than five years to get one built?

Regardless, perhaps the answer to this is simply to hyperfocus ourselves in construction if we've gotten the design researched at the next stop, and pour everything into getting as many space construction points as possible, as quickly as possible. But depending upon the number of build points involved, even that may be infeasible.

>>329880
i suggested we work from the engine block forwards, and have a quick link bridge so that if anything shows up it can drive the completed part, it may not be able to do it's real job but i will move.

>>329882
first, take note at >>329526

from last thread, we cant make mecha, any extra huge ship we do make would have humongous build needs and we problaby cannot make it mobile unless the factory by itself is mobile.

>>329887
irc conversation
(12:45:32 AM) starburst98: ed, i got an idea.
(12:45:56 AM) starburst98: in the icon we build the battleship and carrier from the engine foreward
(12:46:25 AM) starburst98: we also have a small bridge that can latch on to completed segment and drive it
(12:46:53 AM) starburst98: thus removing the constant fear that we will get nearly done and be forced to abandon
(1:06:07 AM) Ed_Pastry: Oh right I didn't notice your message. Yeah, sure I guess that's alright
(1:06:15 AM) starburst98: cool

Just on a different topic: how are we gonna deal with the capitalist aliens? And let's explore the surrounding systems.

>>329854

Azula was feared but also became hated.

>>329854

Did you seriously just rebut Machiavelli by appealing to an episode of Avatar?

Hey guys we should turn around and just take the Breakers head on, I know Sun Tzu and Clausewitz and Rommel and all that lot say it's a bad idea to rush right into the teeth of overwhelming force but in episode 9 of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann...

>>329912
they are both forms of entertenaiment. and there are reasons why TTGL did what they did, its called plot device.

wich we have none yet, save for a few nukes, a couple of orbital lances, dozens of UAVs and a few interceptors.

im sure if machiaveli had a machine powered by willpower he would be a anti spiral anyway.

>>329920
derp. by both i mean ovatar and the icon.

let us remember this is a quest, not srs bsns.

Did researching Breaker Alloys automatically increase the durability of all our military units? Or only ones we build from now on? Or do we need to research new tanks and suits of armor? Or are they not really that durable, just able to do weird things with energy?

Not sure if to post this here or in the game thread but could we train some infantry into like, Recon troops? Not as highly trained as commandos, but capable of working in the kind of terrain we're faced with here and collecting us Intell?

>>329977

Breaker alloys does not upgrade our current units. It's more of a side-grade; Breaker alloys are lighter and more malleable but are less resistant to kinetic damage like explosions and bullets. Due to the large changes in design needed to accommodate the materials' differences, vehicles made with Breaker alloys cannot be made with Human materials (and vice versa).

How many SCs do breaker weapons tend to use? A vague, ballpark estimate would really help. I don't know if we're looking at ten units to run an army for a month of high-intensity combat, or one SC per man per day, or what.

Just as importantly, is there a satisfying increase in firepower?

>>329984

If we are talking a few days of straight action, Breaker weapons will likely use up half again their cost in SC.

The firepower is greater than that of human weapons. The seeker weapons in particular are noticeably better at homing in on weak spots a target than Human missiles.

>>330087
Sweet. We'll make a lot of them, then.

Something like 2-4 SC per day of fighting per tank is pretty steep. We definitely can't upgrade the whole army like that.

That said, some tanks and gunships rigged up like that would be great. And some infantry weapons scattered around.

agree, defending against 2 totally different weapons at the same time is really fucking hard. so a mash up of breaker and human guns would be hard to counter.

how could a breaker orbital lance work?

I really don't think we should split our army up to tackle these portal areas. It violates rather heavily the principle of concentration of force.

We should try air and orbital bombardment alone, at first. If that doesn't work, it would make more sense to do airmobile attacks in sequence, not all at the same time. Even then, I would prefer we hit the anomaly instead. If you guys are serious about destroying magic, that'd be where we'd start. I worry that it would take away the super-strength of the locals, leaving them walking meat for the wildlife.

Also, in the somewhat more long term, we should start giving people science books and kits to help bootstrap a technical civilization.

>>330133
not yet. the gesters accepted our farm books because they were mostly okay with us. some grumbled about us being around but none were outright hostile.

I bet a nonzero number of Dryads will go for it, though. The rebels found SOMEthing in the ruins that made them rebel.

>>330143
indeed. once we find out what it is then we can move in.


watch it be the peasants were controlled by pheromones like the Tau. someone touched a computer thingy and the control over him broke and he passed it to the next guy.

Say Ed.

Are their any bits of breaker biology that are better than humans?

>>330142
know how on how to care for wildlife and make it work for you without magic sounds a magnifcent peaceful way to make amends. we should give those at least.

later on we could teach them geology and basic chemistry. if they take interest, we got uselves a ally.

>>330122
harassing the portals is mostly a problem because the portals are "mobile". i do agree with orbital strikes on them, but using land units can become too troubleful to maintain the tactic.

i would like to "capture" a small portal to capture whatever unit comes trhu. now that we can break shields with breaker weapons, we should be able to get more tech my stealing it.

>>330143
cant we send commando or drones to figure that out? maybe even some diplomats.

>>330146
pants-astic. i lost my trip somehow.

>>330103
It wouldn't

>>330145
They're not better so much as different. Their brains are smaller but compensate by sacrificing creativity and complex emotions, as well as a sense of smell. They're about as strong but a bit more agile, though their wiry physique makes them not as resistant to physical shock as humans. Also they are carnivorous.

>>330150
low creativity and emotions? sounds perfect for a slave race.

With Genetic Engineering IV, I'm tempted to bother Ed about all sorts of crazy monster designs, because we didn't name that colony Ryxix for nothing, damn it!

...but, given our current situation, I think we should spend 45 RP researching a huge ballistic moon cannon, instead. This cost was confirmed in the last discussion thread. Thoughts?

>>330191
I'm all for Moon cannons. Huge railguns is one of my favorites. Placing them on the moon to blow the shit out of a planet is even more a favorite of mine. I say go fucking go on the moon cannon project.

With GEIV, we can finally start mass upgrading troops with MinStr enhancement, which should greatly increase their capabilities. Shame that this mess had to ramp up in the same month. Still, we should consider at least a few months of upgrades before launching our Anomaly assault. We can, with current capabilities, augment 200 guys per month. Improving that capability will take more Medical Districts, though, which take 4 months to build.

>>330238
We should probably get the assault under way before then and see if we can't cut off their connection to magic. That should make things immensly easier for us.

>>330238
We'd still end up killing a lot of our troops, even with reduced casualties. Would having minor augmentations boost them enough to avoid losing more troops than we'd lose on the operating table?

I'm not sure, but I lean towards no. The majority of our combat depends upon vehicles and artillery strikes rather than our infantry's physical capabilities to bring us victory. Let's hold out for GEV and it's casualty-free boosts before hitting everyone with cybernetics.

>>330240
GE-V is going to be a massive undertaking. 405 RP and requiring a specialized structure just to begin the research. It's probably years away.

And yes, my opinion is that having a body of infantry with greater strength, mobility, firepower, and survivability (they get armor plating!) will offset the 5% death rate they'll accrue in the process.

We could upgrade 600 over three months, lose 30 guys (not really a lot) and have a core of really tough hombres for pitched jungle fights.

what about those 28 major implant guys we vat grew?

>>330243
I was going to send them right into commando training, but it depends on if they're all qualified. That whole "only one in 200 are qualified" is tricky. Does being grown in a tank for the purpose of being a commando give you a leg up? I don't know.

If not, then they get to be light infantry. Making them vehicle crews, or even power-infantry, (due to duplication of abilities) is kind of a waste.

>>330246
what about new ULTRA- power infantry? like Spartans, they have a ton of bio implants that make them super strong, and the power assist in the suits is so powerful that it would rip a normal human apart.

>>330248
see >>329526

altho a human-BRIC hybrid could rock.

>>330256
yes i see. but our major implant teach makes someone ungodly powerful compared to a normal human and the only risk is death, which after the next lvl of Genetic Engineering is gone.

MaxStr cybernetics already turn people into Spartans: Super-strong, extremely durable guys with incredible endurance.

>...and the power assist in the suits is so powerful that it would rip a normal human apart.
That's called having a shitty power-assist system designed by stupid assholes.

>>330281
i read the thing about it. simply, the tech for the power assist could not be tuned down and it overcompensated. so an arm would whip all the way around and snap. it could ether barely assist or assist WAY too much. anywhere in between just refused to work. it was made out of some kind of space crystals though, so it was kinda soft sci-fi.

anyway. power assist for people with reinforced skeletons could be much better then people without as they could take more inertial stress and stuff.

>>330283
>the tech for the power assist could not be tuned down and it overcompensated.
Well, that's extremely stupid. No offense.

>...could take more inertial stress and stuff.
Well. At that point we're basically looking at car-crash-level acceleration stress. Like... a hundred gees, off the top of my head.

Besides. At that point, the suit is providing all the motion and the limbs are just along for the ride, so to speak. It would then probably be better to grow clones with no limbs and attach purely robotic limbs, like in Defective.

>>330284
i suppose. could also make them double layer deadly. they wear the BRIC suit, and if it breaks they are STILL dangerous.

>>330285
That seems really pointless when we can just make them infantry and give them a big gun, and have someone else drive the BRIC.

>>330287
it would be like gurren lagann, a large robot with a smaller robot inside of it. they would never see it coming.

>>330284
my original idea for a "superhuman" would be a human with enhaced reflexes specialized for crew duty. if we could cyberimplant them to compensate for physical weakness it would be a extra, but unecessary.

think in a enhaced reflex, physically weak human whose sole purpose is manning vehicles.

>>330339
'sole purpose' things are not good. cause then during times of peace they can't fit into normal society at all.

>>330340
that already had a huge no.

and we are not doing any TH. if we get a "better human" we will have arianism, if we make subhumans we will have slavery, if we make even exchanges humans we will have social repression/castes.

okay what tech should we get next?
the heatshell looks great, and that thing it combos with breaker alloys sounds boss.

I'm gonna suggest we research some units.

Specifically the Moon Gun and also something like a tactical bomber: an aircraft about the price of an interceptor but slightly slower, capable of carrying 8-10 pieces of air to ground ordinance.

Plan: take over the Anomaly

So I was thinking about this, and maybe we should try to be a bit clever.

First off: Lets assess our assets. What do we have, what can we lift to the anomaly?

We also have 12 dropships and can build 1 more this month, giving us a total of 13 dropships (unlucky for some. The enemy I hope) and 38 Gunships (152 more infantry).

Fire support wise we have 38 gunships, 5 bombers (and can build one more), 50 interceptors and eight Test Patterns. We also have 15 cruise missiles and can, based on what we saw in the portal strike lance 10 targets before the guns fall off.

I suggest we employ just about everything we have because this strikes me as a boss fight. First we need to destroy the last remaining portal. This will expend 1 orbital lance strike this month, though we can repair the guns if we launch next time.

We load all our 13 dropships fully:
6 tanks 2
2 MRLS 2
18 BRICs (each with MMRA load outs, unless we want to get fancy and put fusion casters or whatever on them)
86 Light infantry (Strength Augmented)
364 Power Suit Infantry
Meantime we load 152 strength augmented light infantry into our 38 gunships.

The plan would be a two pronged assault on the Anomaly. As a precursor, all five enemy Dryad camps around the Anomaly would be lanced, leaving us 5 units of lance fire for the main assault. This should be done as assault units begin their approach for maximum surprise.

The gunships will approach from the South West, the Drop Ships from orbit. The dropships will be escorted by 12 interceptors and 4 bombers, the gunships by 2 bombers and 24 interceptors. The eight Test Patterns will approach at high altitude and prove target data and point strikes if necessary, remaining 14 interceptors will act as a ready reserve.

The Bombers with the Dropship Group (Group A) will use Carpet Bombs or FAE to blast new landing zones in the jungle for the rest to land and secure the area. The drop ships will immediately return to base and load up with a second force of 26 APCs to allow rapid movement.

Meantime the Gunship force (Group B) will approach from the South West (that looks like the shortest way in to me). 8 tactical missiles, 2 units of Lance fire and their bomber and interceptor escort will be used to clear a path for them right up to the Anomaly. They will fast rope in near but not right on top of it, and then launch a combined ground/air assault to seize the place, supported by the MRLS from Group A.

Group A will move to support group B, either pushing straight in or waiting for the APCs depending on the distances and how much resistance they encounter. If they encounter really heavy resistance then the second lift should be changed for more infantry and BRICs.

Thoughts? I think that's about as far as we can go planning wise right now.

>>331116
If the orbital lances are accurate enough to do that, then this sounds pretty solid. I'd do the attack differently, though. My idea would be, like...

1) Bombardment. Heavy bomber strikes and/or orbital lances to inflict as many casualties as possible on the enemy camps before they know what's going on, and also to clear landing zones. Interceptors arrive to provide continuing air support. UCAVs start orbiting outside of enemy spell range. Bombers can carry 20 regular bombs in addition to their big payload (or can they?) so hopefully they can also stay on station to drop JDAMs.

2) Before the shrapnel's finished flying, gunships arrive, suppress surviving enemies in the LZ, and deploy the 150 cyborgs via fastroping. The troops spread out to begin securing a perimeter.

3) Before the enemy can react meaningfully, dropships arrive. They land and deploy the main body of troops as you describe, organize, and push towards the Anomaly itself.

Past that, we'd have to play it by ear, because there's a lot of variables. But the plan would be to secure the Anomaly and bring in more dropships full of troops and heavy equipment to fortify it against a prolonged siege, before sending in the necessary workers and scientists to research it.

>>331119

Also Solid. Probably less risky than mine, which is rather go for broke.

>>331119
Seems like quite a good plan. Although the supply situation might get iffy if we have to stay for any longer amount of time in a siege.

>>331123
As long as we've got a corridor where dropships can descend without heavy ground fire, we should have no real problem resupplying them.

But hey, who can predict.

Another thing to consider is that the aliens never approach the anomaly themselves, so it's theoretically undefended. (But surrounded)

Nevertheless, I think we should land next to it and approach, instead of right on top. There might be some kind of weird alien magic bullshit, which makes me nervous about landing our entire air fleet on it.

>>331129

Yeah. I think I'll switch to supporting land everyone in the same area. It's a lot less risky if we don't land the drop ships till we have guys on the ground already.

Test Pattern 2010/08/07(Sat)17:48 No. 21465 ID: 8bdb6a
File 128122852562.png - (6.59KB , 300x300 , fugue_gunship.png )

Shame that trying to kill all the tiny portals is pissing into the wind. Hunting down less visible, less defended targets is what UCAVs do best. We finally have a role for the things, but we'd need a hundred to make a difference.

Also: How many RP to design:

-A larger gunship with more dakka?
<==

-A guided projectile for the moon gun?

-Forge Caster + Napalm bomb = ???

-Some kind of budget napalm bomb built without superconductors?

>>331265

I'd suggest modular weapon mounts like a BRIC, and maybe a large bomb bay like a bomber if we can fit it in. That way we can increase our bomber capacity.

Ed, I was thinking... would a Dryad Plague be quicker an easier to develop than a Breaker Plague? We're only one Genetic level short of a Breaker one and if the Dryads are any more like us than they are like Breakers, then we ought to have the facilities and resources to make one already, provided we can get test subjects.

And really, it wouldn't be that hard to send down abduction teams and collect the amount needed within a week. We'd be the Mutons from X-COM, only the Dryads don't have Interceptors. From there, we would only need to release the plague agent into the atmosphere and let those thousands of portals thin out to a few dozen.

Theoretically. So, let's just ask our science advisers: is this viable?

How about a tech that lets us fast-build buildings and walls and shit, in exchange for higher resource cost?

I also ought to throw out the suggestion of orbital insertion vehicles to avoid the mass Anti-air fire of the mages. Most people seem to like drop pods, but I'd prefer if we used something that can both insert AND extract. Something like a high-velocity and smaller dropship. These would have been perfect for the scenario where we had only a few handfuls of portals to deal with.

To tackle the thousand-tiny-portals problem, we'd have to develop hunter-seeker drones, deliver a plague, or otherwise threaten genocide if they don't stand down. And we're simply not at that point yet.

i think the best news on the tiny portals is that being small makes it so any mechs and stuff can't come through.

>>331277
When they say small I think they mean two main battle tanks can drive through side by side small. Not two person's can walk through side by side small. And even if it is that small then you can bring stuff through in parts and assemble them on the other side.

>>331265

-Larger gunship: 30 RP. I am assuming those hardpoints are going to be bombs or missiles, and the turret will be a twin linked medium weapon.
-We can't use breaker weapons for the cannon, seeing as how their ship-based weaponry operates differently from their ground weapons. If you want to have missiles instead, you can research interplanetary cruise and nuclear missiles for 20 RP. They will be launched from the COMMAND NEXUS building, like the other missiles.
-Fusion Bombs will cost 15 RP.
-The reason Napalm bombs cost SC is more of balance than fluff. I just wanted to put a limit to the amount of aerial strikes you can do.

>>331272
-It is possible, but seeing how their biology seems to rely partially on magic, it will be more difficult for our scientists to do. It will requires Genetic Engineering V to research.

>>331273
-Fast building for more resources doesn't make sense to me, but I think I'll allow it for 40RP

>>331274
-A smaller, faster dropship that can enter and leave orbit quickly will cost 30 RP. Now you have to tell me, however, which one would you rather have: Smaller carrying capacity but the ability to quickly insert from space like a drop pod, or more space but insertions are not quite as rapid?

>>331287

Well, I can't directly speak for Test, but would it be possible to put gunship style rocket pods on the hard points?

Also can we research some kind of light surface to air weapon which uses metal or uranium rather than SC?

>>331287
>I am assuming those hardpoints are going to be bombs or missiles
Well, in the drawing, it's supposed to be (not that you can tell) soviet-style pointy rocket pods, and then battletech-style huge-n-boxy rocket pods at the ends of the wings. The boxy ones are drawn kind of huge, I admit. Depends on how much lift the upgraded thrusters can provide.
I prefer helicopter rockets (they're still guided, I assume) to Interceptor-style air to ground weapons. Gunships don't really fly high or fast enough for regular bombs. (Plus, two bombs per SC is damned expensive)
Also, no passengers. CAS only.

>and the turret will be a twin linked medium weapon.
Nice. That's a lot of dakka.

>We can't use breaker weapons for the cannon
I was thinking it'd fire a kinetic kill vehicle with maneuvering thrusters on it. Like one of them ABM munitions ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC97wdQOmfI )

>>331287
Honestly, I'd go for the smaller, quicker design. They'd have to be deployed en masse, but we really have to cut out the middleman of Atmospheric Forces of we want to reduce AA casualties.

Furthermore, giving our insertion vehicles orbital capability allows us to use them on planets and moons with no atmosphere, unlike all of our current aircraft.

How about regular drop pods? Any idea how much they'd cost in BP?

>>331341
what kind? SPACE MARINE style that can have a whole squad inside or ODST style with one guy per pod?

NEW RESEARCH PATH PROPOSAL:

Orbital Guidance: A new generation of atmospheric ballistics devices and advances in satellite automation allow for payload delivery comparable to traditional methods and a new class of smaller craft capable of moving in and out of orbit and atmospheres.
Concrete developments in this path would manifest as the capability to use Orbital BP to manufacture satellites for energy production, global monitoring, communication, and weapon deployment, as well as the potential for orbit-to-surface insertion vehicles.

By tech level II, the guidance systems should be sophisticated enough for robotic attack satellites to completely replace our current line of "Solo" Heavy Bombers. Such satellites would be expensive and multiple ones would be needed to cover the entire surface, but there would be no risk of interception or AA retaliation.
Theoretically, advancing to higher tech levels would allow satellites to target larger areas with greater precision, possibly even serving an AA role if it becomes truly sophisticated.

At least, this is what our scientists say. Dr. Ed Pastry from Engineering is in a better position to decide the real benefits.

>>331460

sounds like a something computer systems would give us.

>>331490
This would be a more focused field of research specifically bent to accelerating our progress in making use of our greatest advantage: carrying on this fight from where they can't reach us. Besides, if we can get satellites that generate power from the planet's magnetic field, it would yield unreal levels of electricity. We've done experiments with it on Earth with great success- except for that the power cable snapped almost immediately after starting because of poor orbital guidance.

Hey Ed, what kind of RP are we looking at for a heavy rail gun capable of full automatic fire (about equivalent of an HMG) which a max strength infantryman can carry.

>>332341
I think the recoil from such a weapon would be quite deadly to anyone firing the thing (considering it's already a heavy weapon with hefty recoil, and if you make it fire on full auto... well, yeah)

>>332345
railguns have no recoil.

>>332346
They don't? huh... Where was that mentioned? I seem to have missed it.

I wonder if we can make Caster turrets without needing RP.

>>332346
Railguns have recoil.

>>332345
It's fine. We're talking super cyborgs. Though I suspect they were already carrying heavy weapons.

>>332349
The Max-strength cyborgs are more than capable of using heavy weapons of at least the same size as power armour soldiers.
The problem comes when you put heavy weapons on full auto.

Wait... would it make any difference if we put our max strength cyborgs IN power armour?

>>332350
Due to the way power armour works I don't think that would add any benefits.

By the way Ed, would it be possible to make digging explosives for our power infantry? A shaped charge that creates a more or less instant foxhole.

>>332346
Railguns have recoil its just softer than an equivalent conventional fire arm.

What does everyone think of pausing the rush for the icon to research stuff like super gunships, maybe some form of improved tank or more armour on BRICs etc. given the new threat we now face?

i think the combo nexus and heatshell tech will be anti-magic armor.put that on the bottom of ships and BAM dryads are totes boned

>>332391
I think we should finish the Nexus research. It might not give us an immediate solution to our problems but I do think it's something that's going to be very useful down the line and might give us a way to stop more furries from porting in.

How much RP for drogue retarded grenades? Some kind of infantry weapon which fires an explosive which slows down as it approaches the target to about as fast as an incoming sword, then explodes on impact.

Also, how much RP for these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerhaubitze_2000

(IE, a fast firing Howitzer mounted on an APC chassis, cheap on superconductors and with lots of fire power for infantry support)

What we really need are super kill trooper furries to counter all these superhumans we fight. Maybe combine the usual kill-furry concept with that 'less creative, but good at following instructions' thing. How many RP?

Anonymous 2010/09/06(Mon)13:25 No. 22705 ID: 54af1f
File 128380474293.png - (5.60KB , 208x203 , firing_arc.png )

You know, there's something a bit screwy with one of the autocannon towers at the anomaly. It'd be much better if it was moved forward to the edge of the green bit, then it could fire both West and South.

>the lack of hand-to-hand training as well as good melee weapons is a big drawback

How much to give 'em swords and shit?

And maybe bands of explosive armor for the vehicles.

And way more land mines.

Also, sergals to swing the swords. We shall fight fur with fur.

>>332832
later we get the space sergals. right now we don't have enough time to make them.

how about we punish and reward the guys at the same time? like they get a medal for courage and awesome but get a punishment for breaking formation without warning.

>>332341
A fully automatic railgun that would still be able to be wielded by MaxStr and Power Infantry would be weaker than the medium railgun cannons found on BRICs and APCs, and more closely resemble a larger version of the Commando rifle. 15 RP

>>332350
Implantation doesn't add any additional benefits when wearing Power armor.

>>332364
10 RP

>>332453
A slow missile launcher would take 15 RP to develop.

>>332454
A rapid-fire artillery piece would cost 35 RP. Likely would have less range and less powerful ordinance than the MLRS, but faster rate of fire and cheaper.

>>332483
A close combat organism would cost 75 RP for a humanoid version (Slower, smarter, better able to use a variety of equipment) and 50 RP for a non-humanoid version (faster, unable to do anything but bite/slash/whatever the enemy)

>>332505
Understood. Assume the turret on the left mirrors the turret placement on the right.

>>332831
Depends on what you will be equipping them with. As a sidearm, like a knife or baton, would be 1 METAL for 2. A much larger weapon acting as a primary weapon would cost 1 METAL, 1 CERAMIC for 2, and force them to only use a pistol (Power Infantry sized) for a firearm.

>A slow missile launcher would take 15 RP to develop.
Might make sense to just build more RPGs. If tank rounds go right through Snarren shields, an RPG will probably poke a hole in them.

>A close combat organism would cost 75 RP for a humanoid version (Slower, smarter, better able to use a variety of equipment)
If this works like I hope, this would be a great big help, and something we should do sooner rather than later, since it requires an investment of time.

75 RP sure is a lot, though. 75 RP is enough to finish Nexus research, so we can hopefully focus solely on helping Dryads, or just leave.

>Depends on what you will be equipping them with. As a sidearm, like a knife or baton, would be 1 METAL for 2.
This should definitely be standard. Not so sure about the swords, since power infantry can carry guns big enough to fuck up a Snarren at range and we want as many of those as we can get. (And we've got rebel dryads for a melee meat-wall)

A heavy bomber load of 20x napalm bombs still only costs 2 SC, right? If not, maybe we could try researching a 3 BP Melt Disney World(tm) fusion payload.

No way, man. We're calling them Muschio Meltos(tm).

Speaking of quest references... we didn't name the desert colony Ryxix for nothing. We named it that because we're going to make monsters there.

>>332908
I approve of all plans that involve showing the Snarren what properly terrifying sharkwolfthings are.

Improved Motors is another good way to boost the army's melee abilities, but at 60 RP, it's almost as pricy as researching the monsters.

>>332911
But would it take effect immediately? I guess the decision is between the logistics of deploying either new tech, and I don't have that information.

>>332907
Also, totally, yes.

>>332917
>But would it take effect immediately? I guess the decision is between the logistics of deploying either new tech, and I don't have that information.
I don't know, but given how upgrades have worked in the past, we'll probably need to pay a hefty sum of superconductors to deploy the motor upgrades. So... maybe later.

Meanwhile, organisms don't seem like they'd require fancy materials. They'll need cybernetics, but that's not so bad. (A single Suicide Drone takes almost as many SC as a minor-augmentation cyborg!)

New tech is tricky that way. Each new tech seems more SC-hungry than the old stuff.

...say. I wonder if we can fit the heavy gunship's hardpoints with rocket pods instead of bombs, to save SC.

http://quest.lv/wiki/User:LionsPhil/TheIconBuildingDoc

It strikes me that there's quite a lot of fairly static numeric information in the quest that could be presented better on its wiki page than having to delve for the last update where Ed told us which buildings were available, especially given that ther might be later text comments in updates that tweak values.

Good idea, bad idea? That template's obviously a prototype; it might be missing a field and it doesn't have pretty resource icons yet because I don't want to go uploading images that will never get used and just become clutter. Also it's going to need each building cropped into a separate image, because you can't get Mediawiki to embed a subset of an image. :/ I'll probably make the template enforce a common prefix or something.

It might also make sense for vehicles, but probably not research since that needs to show the graph of connections and changes quite a lot quite often. It's also more tied to the current point in the quest for the purposes of archiving than exactly how much a Medium Cesspit may have cost on that exact turn.

Is there a way to upload the building/vehicle construction .xls to the wiki?

>>332922
It can probably be dropped in the File namespace if Dylan pokes the configuration, but that has the same kind of problem as the big image currently there: it's a big, monolithic lump that has to be downloaded; loaded into, edited, and saved from another program; and then re-uploaded when something changes. Updating a value when it's all template arguments is a case of thumping edit, overtyping, and thumping save. And edit conflicts are less likely and easier to deal with because of the finer granularity and differencing.

Although admittedly a spreadsheet version is more use if you're playing with a solver.

Since /questdis/ is for crazy theories too:
>* LionsPhil finally realises that the logo at the top of the The Icon graphic is the union of all of the characters in "The Icon".
>< Shiitake> ...fffuuu I didn't notice that
><Shiitake> It only requires HIN tho
><LionsPhil> Well, yeah.
><LionsPhil> May also apply to the patterns on the other Anomoly discs, but it's so lossy getting a word back out would be 99% arse-pull.
><Shiitake> right
><LionsPhil> http://quest.lv/kusaba/quest/src/128296342596.png <-- The left one we have does look like a potential result of "MATERIAL", though.
><LionsPhil> But the right one...enh. Less so.
><LionsPhil> I can't think what'd cause that XX-pattern.
><Shiitake> V and A possibly.

Look at me I'm bumping this thread again.
Ed, can you take a look at http://quest.lv/wiki/The_Icon#Unknown_Second_Universe and set it straight on which Ux system is which? The quest seems to have got muddled at one point (posts in question are >>/questarch/138441 and >>/questarch/161609 ).

>>332906
Actually I've decided to take out the BOMBER's capacity to carry numerous smaller munitions. It overlaps too much with their special munitions, I feel. Also, I'll give a BOMBER-sized version of the FUSION CANISTER, the STARMAKER (or you can call it Melt Disney World(tm) or Muschio Melto(tm). That works just as well). It will cost 3 BP, 1 SC and 5 FUEL and 2 METAL for one.

>>332932
My mistake. The first one is correct:

UA: White dwarf star, no planets. Unexplored
UB: Shrimp home system
UC: Red Dwarf, planets with METAL, URANIUM and SUPERCONDUCTOR
UD: Dryad planet

>>332919
Replacing the hardpoints with rocket pods would cost additional 3 SC and 5 METAL, but would not require extra resources for the ammunition.

>>333124
How much to research a tactical bomber which can carry 10 or 12 or however many interceptor munitions?

>>333124
>It overlaps too much with their special munitions, I feel.
Well, it's nice to have the option for heavy bombers to loiter and drop bombs one by one in support of ground forces, rather than a big ol' alpha strike. Ah well.

I think trying to find air/orbital support options that don't need lots of SC may be a lost cause. Forge Casters and Breaker guns need a lot as well...

I think it may be time to cough up 75 RP, engineer soldier critters, and ramp up Gestation Tank capacity. (They'll need some SC for cybernetics, but a MinStr cyborg only needs a teeny bit more of that than a Suicide Drone. One barrage of bombs from our Interceptors needs as many SC as building 200 such cyborgs)

Arguable Complexity 2010/10/18(Mon)15:01 No. 25213 ID: 6ad08e
File 128743929460.png - (51.41KB , 897x2382 , icon_res_tree_27-08-2010.png )

Edo-kun, Edo-kun, I untangled your research tree. Do you like it? :3

>>335013
I like that this is moving into PCB path-routing territory. :D

>>335013
good job dude.

Arguable Complexity 2010/10/18(Mon)15:30 No. 25216 ID: 6ad08e
File 128744102150.png - (53.14KB , 897x2382 , icon_res_tree_27-08-2010.png )

>>335013
Forgot the Improved Motors cost.

>>335013
>>335016

Awesomeness. I'll try to model the future tech tree off of this one, so all you need to do to make it clearer is to delete the text.

>>332920
Redirecting the discussion from the wiki.

I pondered the template approach, but decided to go with tables. Generally because IMO tables are what this kind of info is meant for.
Either way, I think pictures will have to go. We have nearly 60 building to list, and another 20 for vehicles/spaceships/weaponry. Mind you, large buildings (18 of them) have icons 168x168 px each. The pages are going to be unnecessarily long.

Additionally, there might be a bit of misconcenption about how hard it is to edit a huge slab of a table versus a wall of nearly identical template entries. That being that they're about equally cumbersome to edit. So when it comes down to how it looks, I prefer tables.

As for embedding a subset of an image, this is impossible, but there is a way of linking from a section of an image via imagemap extension (not sure if installed here). A very simple example can be found here: http://www.armadahq.com/wiki/index.php5?title=Maelstrom#Sector_Map , made by yours truly.
So what we can have is an picture with an index of buildings/ships linking to various things further down the page. In this case templates could potentially work better than tables.

Like LP, I see the entry having icons for metal, ceramics, workers, etc. instead of words.

If you have no idea what this was all about, take a look here: http://quest.lv/wiki/Talk:The_Icon

Merging Metal and Ceramics: Good idea/bad idea?
Same with merging Uranium and Superconductors.

>>/quest/252254
>For one, the anomaly battle takes place in the middle of a fuckhuge forest.
Not exactly. The clearing apparently extends beyond the maximum range of our weapons.
>Ryxix, unlike the anomaly, is in the middle of the desert, which means no trees that give cover from artillery and MLRS.
Trees don't really provide cover from artillery. It's a bit like trying to huddle up against a telephone pole to stay out of the rain. Just don't work.
>In the desert, they cannot hide, and attacking Ryxix would be an entirely different matter than the anomaly, given that it is basically our military stronghold.
Actually, the Anomaly is our military stronghold. It has all our best troops and most of our vehicles. In fact, Ryxix is quite vulnerable right now.

>>335979
Also, as long as they're opening portals to bring in reinforcements from other universes, we're basically fighting against someone with an unlimited resources cheat.

>>335980
mostly, but the snarren my say "fuck you" to the dryads for who knows why. we need to capture a living one. but anything that can breach their shields usually obliterates them.

>>335982
I don't know how much in the way of metagaming faggotry it is for Splinter to know this, but from our perspective it seems pretty obvious that ol' rabbit ears god is turning his races together against us regardless of how they might otherwise feel. The Snarren were one of the original choices he considered to do the actual destruction of Earth.

>>335979
> Not exactly. The clearing apparently extends beyond the maximum range of our weapons.

It does? huh, that wasn't really on my mind when I wrote that.

> Trees don't really provide cover from artillery. It's a bit like trying to huddle up against a telephone pole to stay out of the rain. Just don't work.

That wasn't exactly what I meant about 'cover' (yes, I realize I should have phrased it better). I was more reffering to that the artillery elements were unable to get good shots at targets hiding in the woods, because it was hard getting reliable information about their position.
They either had to (figuratively) shoot in the dark, or at that which they only had the vaguest idea where was.
Of course, blindingly obvious things like the portals are impossible to miss.

> Actually, the Anomaly is our military stronghold. It has all our best troops and most of our vehicles. In fact, Ryxix is quite vulnerable right now.

The anomaly is more of a heavily guarded point of interest.
We shifted a large portion of our forces there to ward of what is the heaviest attack on us on the planet to date.

Of course, more or less half of our troops, and half of our vehicles are there, (counting the soldiers and tanks that are inbound) to ward of said attack, and then there are the troops we have aiding the rebels, so yes, you are right about Ryxix being lightly defended (though the desert hasn't exactly been a hotspot for activity ever since we dropped that nuke on the first portal some time ago, so it makes sort of sense to prioritize the deployment of troops to where they are actually needed).

uhhh the telephone pole thing doesn't work on this planet since the trees here are huge as fuck.

>>336023
>I was more reffering to that the artillery elements were unable to get good shots at targets hiding in the woods
Righto. You're thinking concealment.

>>336024
They're also further apart. The 'shadow' of cover each tree casts is quite limited, and totally random. Troops protected from shrapnel in one direction are unprotected from another, unless the branches above are somehow strong enough to stop an unburst artillery shell.

Ok, we need to take DNA samples from every Driad and Poodle dead, if we cant take the time to that, lets collect some fingers in a freezer, the important thing is to get as many different DNA as possible. If, later, we unlock "Driad/Poodle Plague" we can vat grow as many subjects as we need.

>>336960
Probably wise. I expect poodle DNA can only help is developing anti-poodle weapons.

Also: mines. We really need some half-decent cost-effective area denial.

>>336962
Artillery shells that deploys mines over distance would also be useful...

>>336960
Yeah, we positively have to collect some corpses. We've got technologies to steal.
>>336963
It could be an alternative "tower" for the MLRS. I'm thinking Warzone 2100-style modular vehicles where every component has a set cost and you combine them as you see fit.

We need to get a lot of cloning chambers online as soon as reasonably possible. We can't sustain this kind of casualties for long without far more replacement bodies.

It's kind of bitter to contemplate the last few remnants of humanity becoming dominated by force-cloned soldiers, but it's what we have.

I suppose that what we really need is some time to peacefully extract resources from this planet to gain in strength, but I don't know how good the odds of that happening are. I'm sure they'll attack again soon in even more force than before.

>>336975
If we get a chance to expand our economic base, we really need to set up mining operations in system UC and strip it of its delicious superconductors: http://tgchan.org/wiki/The_Icon#Unknown_Second_Universe

Then we can actually use our bombers and orbital weapons again. (We mustn't forget nukes, either.)

Instructions for making biological mecha (with low superconductor cost):

1] Find a naturally occuring creature which is large, durable, and usually docile, but can be roused to destructive anger when its loved ones are threatened, like, say, the common african or indian elephant.

2] Apply genetic engineering and in-eutero cybernetic enhancement as desired. Most genetic modifications are optional, and can be left for the MK-II if time or resources are an issue. An armored elephant turns out to be pretty scary already. A control scheme involving a direct pilot connection to host's higher brain functions is your only requirement to make it more than a glorified horse. Just like a master-trainer relationship, but with more refined commands. Given a reasonable understanding of cybernetics, this sort of biomechanical interface is pretty trivial, but relies on trust built between pilot and host.

3] Armor it like a vehicle, mount weapons on hard points. Remeber, mass is an elephant's favorite weapon.

4] Begin research for MK-II, where you create the first knuckle walking elephants with opposable thumbs. Consider uplifting elephant sentience to create super soldiers if desired.

I'm not really 100% on the elephant thing, but I think a major priority right now is making monsters and shit that don't need many superconductors. Unless we find a better place to live, superconductors are basically the only thing we care about.

...and we probably can't actually switch planets right now, because we don't have any superconductors, and SOMEONE decided to disassemble several of our freighters.

>>336990
We could probably make an effort to expand the moonbase though and transport all non essential personal to it. Then we can eventually move over our military personal as well. Put up a few mines dedicated entirely to feeding the moon cannon more ammunition. Make a giant troll face out of some lights and then just sit there and bombard the planet into oblivion while telling the Dryads to suck it.

But that's not really a good plan.

Getting some expendable guard beasts has a higher priority than trolling the Dryads on a huge scale. Would be nice if we could get something like a cross between rats and attack dogs. Something that breeds like crazy, can eat almost anything, is extremly territorial, vicious like hell and will attack on the slightest provocation.

If we let something like that loose in the ecosystem it should hopefully create some fun chaos. And work as area denial against our enemies. It would be a bonus if we could tame them and use them as anti snarren shock troopers.

We need to stay on the planet to get Superconductors, Fuel, and Uranium. There's none of that on the moon. That means we need to maintain the Ryxix colony.

And we already tried designing ravenous pests. They're not really going to put a dent in the planet's ecosystem, because it's already full of giant monsters that eat everything.

I think we should make a dedicated soldier species and start churning them out. Dunno if that's actually better than just churning out humans, though. Prior experience has indicated that humans are the best all around design our guys are capable of making.

Also, I don't really have a solid plan for what to do in The End, other than to follow the rough plan that we settled on awhile ago...

Any ideas?

best all around, but what about big beasts to counter the snarren beasts? just grow like... king kongs.

>>336996
Well, feel free to ask Ed if you want, but I doubt we'll be able to make anything better than MBTs.

>>336996
My big concern on this is that having confidence in our ability to genetic engineer monsters good enough to go toe to toe with our enemy's genetically engineered monsters with magic powers seems overly optimistic.

I can't help but feel that we should be playing to our strengths, not our weaknesses- developing more and better technology and ranged weapons, just trying to design them to not need any SCs to build. We've had good success with the fusion casters even against their best troops, for example; their only weakness is that they take resources we can't afford. Why not put our efforts into developing slightly less effective but non-superconductor-dependent weaponry? Then we can have our troops use those for the most part and only put the SCs where they're really needed, on superweapons and essential projects.

Instead of using our cloning tanks on monsters, use them on populace that can be trained into soldiers, scientists or workers as needed. If we really want to genetically engineer something, we can tweak humans to be a bit more effective. Or survive in space. Or perhaps some sort of rampantly growing super-crop would be a good start, so that we can get far more food on a per-worker basis. There are almost certainly better ideas.

If we can make anything SIMILAR to MBT's we'd be able to get them cheaper.

>>337023
Why?

>>337022
My plan is to make big strong troopers who are better than humans at close combat AND carrying big guns. Apparently this makes them uncreative for some reason, but whatever. They just have to do what we tell them.

There is a long tradition, in sci-fi settings including humanoid mechs, of mankind's greatest weapons of war being made with biological components. I'm just trying to play the setting by suggesting we make them. I would argue that augmenting genetically modified biology with cybernetics and superior equipment IS playing to our strengths.

Of course, often they are barely controlled monsters, so I want to try building off of something benign and unlikely to rampage if left without a pilot.

>>337028
... are you saying grow grow an EVA?
hmmm....
if we can get it to actually have an A.T. field then it would be ungodly powerful. could just step on the jumbo snarren and turn them into pancakes. and if they make an even MORE jumbo one then it is already there to counter it.

>>337025
What do you mean, why? They're vat-grown! That's free aside from the time it takes to make them, which we could be using to get MORE MANS.

>>337022
Pretty much this.

Also sorting out our economy. The reason we're SC-starved is not that our tech is too SC-fancy; it's that we're mining an SC-poor world. Pretty sure it would be more sustainable if we started getting in materials from better sources.

>>337035
And the manpower to run the facilities, the resources to build the facilities, etc.

Tanks are "free," too, if you consider it's just factories, mines, and workers...

>>337036
But there aren't any other sources unless we make another interstellar colony, which makes bookkeeping an even bigger nightmare. Plus, we need more ships. Might be better to just build even more SC mines on this planet until we're ready to leave. I'm not sure.

Ok, this is MY list of research priorities, they may not be the best... at all.

1. Mines and better entrenchment tools and tactics (What happend with sandbags? Second line to fall back? crossed fire? Star Forts? etc.)

2.Vat Grown light infantry, non-humans for simplicity and efficiency, LI are meatshields, Power inf. and commando should still be humans.

3. Better infatry and ground based weapons and tactics (We wont use SAWs and LAWs in SPACE? How about Nazi's Stug based cheap tanks?)

4. Rat based biological weapon for area denial. They may not work in here, but will have a future use.

But right now, our priorities should be, investigate the anomaly and GTFO (from the anomaly, and start making evacuation plans for a planetary GTFO... WMDs or other spite weapons optional...)

I agree that we ought to get as much SC mining done as possible until we leave the planet. We need to replace those freighters.

Anyway, I think we're all thinking too short-term here. Every technology we develop specifically to solve a problem native to one planet is technology that could have been used to give us a permanent edge. For example, trying to design a Breaker or Snarren plague makes sense. Making a Dryad plague does not.
Likewise, bolstering the size and strength of our fleet and mounting our primary megaweapons on that makes sense. Placing a giant immobile cannon as a fixed structure on the moon doesn't, unless we can pack up the cannon's prime components and deploy it on another world.

We're a race of space nomads. We need to make all of our advancements things that we can take with us and will work in a variety of situations. Now, making advancements in genetic engineering makes sense, as it's an extremely versatile tech, but we can't afford to lose it as soon as we leave the planet, due to the giant lab superproject we'd need to build. If we're going to go that route at all, I say we construct a small ship designed to house the genetics lab.

As for making genetic monsters, I'm all for that. I eventually want to take humans out of the front-lines completely, since we can't afford this many casualties. Having a purebreed citizen caste and a clone warrior caste would cause too many social issues and might lead to an uprising. However, we still need ground troops to supplement our orbital attack superiority. Thus, monsters. The Tozol route and the EVA route are equally acceptable.

>>337029
That's the outstanding example, yes, but there are others. Evas, Engels, Busters, E-frames, even one version of Gundams has a hint of something living under the armor.

>>337044
researching the anomaly is pretty much a given sure, but at the moment we lack a place to GTFO to, and lack the storage capacity to do it in one trip. Also, abandoning the resistance we accidentally started would be kind of lame. It would doom them to failure and leave the prophecies about us being recorded in local history as true. That sorta bugs me.

How about producing what we DO have in abundance and trading with that other planet for the superconductors we can't get here?

>>337056
I don't think that we will have that much social trouble with a new engineered race, we already have the Nautilus, but dividing the thing in "castes"... that may bring some trouble...

>How about producing what we DO have in abundance and trading with that other planet for the superconductors we can't get here?
They don't sell SC.

>>337066
the bastards! Course, as a pre-spaceflight society, maybe they just don't know superconductors when they see em, and don't recognize their value. Maybe we can just show them what we want, and get them for cheap :3

Ed Pastry 2011/01/16(Sun)22:01 No. 29591 ID: 61e33a
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Gonna be starting up the new Icon chapter soon (I know I haven't finished The End's current chapter, but it's hit a slow spot and I think a temporary change in direction will be helpful in the long run), but there will be major balance changes. Due to this, I have two options:

Implement the changes immediately, but be forced to skip ahead to the point where the Splinter finishes study of the Nexus and construction of CRUISER (Which still needs a name) and abandons planet Gretz,
OR
Play a shortened chapter encompassing the time between the present and the abandoning of Gretz, without the game changes.

>>339391
I'm ok with a timeskip. The sooner we can get into space and possibly nuke a city or two from orbit the happier I will be.

Abandon Gretz? But... the rebels! Maybe we can just take them with us...?

There's probably going to be a lot of decisions to make as we leave the planet. And we can probably do it in like 2 updates, so I think we should just play it out.

>>339391
While it's kind of an obvious high-level plot thing that humanity is kept on the run and unable to settle down, the notion that we're going to be forced to abandon Gretz is kind of, eh...

Raises the question of where we're going. Maybe we'll get a clue from the Nexus. Maybe we should send ships off the map to find more stars.

If that don't work, I guess we should head to that nearby airless rock. That's close enough that we can take multiple trips. (Though we want to conserve fuel, because there's no nebulae around to harvest)

>>/quest/272824
>What about making some more Beardy Bobs? They were very useful.
They weren't THAT useful, and each one costs almost as much SC as a cyborg. (And cyborg upgrades consume most of our SC these days)

They killed Snarren real good though... and if we face any more Big Dogs we'll need every advantage we can get (although honestly we should just geneforge something huge to fight them)

>>/quest/273080
It's time to decide if we stay here and keep fighting, risking discovery by the Breakers, leaving a small, relatively disposable outpost behind to assist the rebels until such time as they are successful, or just abandon the world entirely. Our next actions shall define what direction we go here.

>>339565
I would like to stay here until such time as we have located another source of SCs with our scouts. Even though we're slowly bleeding out population, we need to keep advancing our tech and training our people- that means the kind of resources that a planet has.

Actually doing something with that alien planet that was willing to trade might help in that regard. Worth investigating, at least.

Anyway, eventually there will likely be another major push by the Dryads, and I'd like to be gone before it hits... but where the heck are we supposed to go, then? I would prefer not to leave without a destination in mind.

Let's go to the airless rock system. Buildings in a vacuum take a long time to build, so let's send guys ahead to set up basics.

A ton of new workers finish training on turn 90, so let's set that as our departure date for the population.

Arguable Complexity 2011/01/20(Thu)04:46 No. 29772 ID: d6540f
File 129552756548.png - (50.34KB , 897x2169 , icon_res_tree_2011-01-20.png )

Updated.
I think I'm gonna take the liberty of uploading this to the Icon wiki page. Then I'll crop the yet-not-researched tech icons and copy Ed's descriptions for them.

Too bad the wiki doesn't know what imagemaps are, they'd make things much easier. Trivial, even.

On topic: I'm gonna be unoriginal and say leave our current world entirely. I kinda doubt the rebellion is really going to win there, with or without our help, and I don't see a good enough reason to keep supplying them when we have at least two races chasing us across the universe.

>>339572
>upload then crop
Wrong way around. Unless it's brand spanking new or undocumented, there's no way to embed just a region of an image in a wiki page; each tech icon needs to be a separate file.

I mean, cool, go for it, though. I suggest sticking all the files under a common prefix; perhaps File:The Icon/Tech/Automatic Sasquatch Mafipulator.png etc.

>>339573
Done and done.

I wasn't clear, what I meant was "upload the tree image, crop some icons, upload them as separate files".

Which is pretty much what I did. I was tempted to put the big image at 100% zoom, but the page takes a lot to scroll through already. For those of you who view the page on 1024x768, the right side of the tree image should be somewhere in the middle of the screen.

Disregard that last line about screen resolution, I changed it to right-hand.

1) Neural Implants could potentially be a game-changer by letting us do the painfully slow things (training and research) faster. But it could also be Genetic Engineering all over again, IE: A gigantic pile of RP and associated expenses in order to do things that are basically worse than doing nothing.

2) Ditto for Computers IV. Drones are very expensive and not very good. I was hoping the UCAVs would be useful for their long loiter times, but since they're so easy to shoot down, that's not been useful. The other types of drones are useful only as expendable chaff, except they're too expensive to be really expendable. But what the heck do we research instead? Massive Factories? Labs? Shipyards? Mines? Close Combat Organisms (which will probably be some misshapen monstrosity instead of something cool and/or sergals)

3) Maybe we're approaching the whole Dryad war all wrong. Maybe we need to be pumping out lots of consumer goods and giving them to the Dryad population. Just dump crates of them from high altitude with parachutes until we've created a market, and setting up shops in Rebel territory. Get the underclasses on our side, like what made the rebellion in the first place.

4) We don't really have a good feel for what things are like with the rebels. Hell, I don't even know how many there are. Are there millions of guys in rebel territory? (If so, how do they feel about us?) Or is it just a few thousand desperate guerrillas we're pretending can win?

6) We don't need to keep secrets from the Galts. What are they going to tell Totus that the Snarren haven't already? We can totally spin our presence on the planet in a positive light, too. Basically say that we're supporting one faction that's on the defensive, and another group of aliens are supporting another faction that's on the offensive, and we're losing because the other guys are bringing in way more dudes. Plus, we totally tried coexisting peacefully, but that didn't work, then we tried just living on an uninhabited island, with their permission, and then they arrived and tried to kill us all, so fuck them.

7) Speaking of fucking them, we can easily build enough Starmakers to drop one per day. That's unfortunately not a lot when it comes to a serious war, but it should help.

8) It's weird how whenever we get more workers, we quickly get to the point where I can't figure out how to get by with less. We need to free up workers and send them ahead to Airless Rockograd to build buildings for when we move the population. I don't want to sit in orbit for 5 months doing nothing.

9) Does anyone remember how much ship space food units take up? It can't possibly be one space for one person/month of food. That'd mean we starve right quick.

> 1) Neural Implants could potentially be a game-changer by letting us do the painfully slow things (training and research) faster. But it could also be Genetic Engineering all over again.
I’d ask Ed if he could make up some sort of tech that combines Neural Implants path and Computers path (or just the latter) which speeds up all research and possibly reduces its cost.

> 2) Ditto for Computers IV. […] But what the heck do we research instead? Massive Factories? Labs? Shipyards? Mines? Close Combat Organisms (which will probably be some misshapen monstrosity instead of something cool and/or sergals)
I have a feeling we’ll probably have to specialize in one (maybe two) tech branches to get anywhere. Let’s see what Comps V offers. We can always stop at Comps IV and go full Dr. Frankenstein. We are fairly far in Gen Engineering, so human/dryad hybrids with innate magical powers must be somewhere within our reach.

> 3) Maybe we're approaching the whole Dryad war all wrong. Maybe we need to be pumping out lots of consumer goods and giving them to the Dryad population.
I’ll admit I read the threads a while ago and probably forgot something crucial, but what exactly does overthrowing Dryad elders bring us? Accomplishment for doing something good? Are we going to mess with each and every race on our way? We got what we wanted, let’s get the hell out.

> 6), 7), 8)
Agreed.

Huge thread so I don't know if this has been asked before.

Can we build the biotronics facilty as a purpose built starship?

>>339587
>We are fairly far in Gen Engineering, so human/dryad hybrids with innate magical powers must be somewhere within our reach.

They would be useless. Possibly worse than useless. Magic is not something innate in Dryads, what they do is basically ask their god to do something and if the proper rituals are observed then it happens. It's made through an external force that makes a choice wheter or not to make it happen. Dryads working for us or a human or a gester trying to use magic would no have any effect in the slightest, except maybe make them look silly.

>>339599
If it's small enough we could put one in a freighter. But that gives less space for supplies and passengers. And right now we need all the space for people and stuff that we can get. We also need to get out as soon as we can and every extra ship we have to build means staying longer.

>>339585
This all seems basically right, but I simply can't remember enough details of this quest to say much more. :|

>>339599
I asked that one a while back and never got an answer.

Ed Pastry 2011/01/21(Fri)22:38 No. 29861 ID: 03e599
File 129567831112.png - (3.67KB , 259x152 , SHC3.png )

Gonna be addressing some of these questions lying around here.

>>339585
4) The rebellion is difficult to define clearly. 80% of Dryads are nonmagical, but only about 36% of that number supports the actions of the rebels. Even fewer in number are those who actually resort to combat to continue the rebellion, numbering nearly as low as humanity. The majority of this number resides in small sectors of the planet that are under complete rebel control. With the appearance of the Snarren, the rebels are steadily losing ground. The future psychological and cultural effects of this failing rebellion, however, are inestimable. We cannot guess how their civilizations will react in the coming years.

9)Food takes 1/10th of the space of other materials. This means that APPROXIMATELY 160 spaces can support our entire population for a turn.

>>339599
The facility is too large to fit in a standard freighter, but for 15 RP a specialized freighter can be researched that will carry the facility.

Here's my plans for the move.

In 6 months, our ships finish upgrading and a new batch of Workers finishes. That's basically when we've got everything we need from the planet. This of course requires that we hold out for another 6 months, at a minimum, but I think we can do it if we really pull out all the stops with bombing the bejesus out of everything. The Snarren will be pouring everything into defeating the Dryads instead of attacking our island colony.

We can sell the Galts tech to get metal. We've never really needed lots of metal before, but we do now. We'll stop by there and pick up 6k metal or something and then head to the colony site and start building in preparation for the arrival of dudes. The colony will either be UC or Hylios depending on what's at the latter.

Since this means we'll be at the planet for 6 more turns, possibly as long as 10 or even 12, we should research Plasma Guns to kill Snarren better.

>>339667
Agree with this. Also like the idea of moving scientific facilities like labs and in the future, the biotronics facility to freighters, but that can wait for later.

I maybe kinda sorta am deconstructing the 5 labs aboard freighters right now.

They're small labs, which are crappy and inefficient. 5 RP/turn for 2-3 turns won't really matter, and we need more space for things and people. (And we need to make a medical freighter to replace the one that someone scrapped)

On that note, how many RP to make a medium/large freighter?

Also gonna need Massive Labs and later Shipyards.

Can we research some kinda sensory upgrade so we can pinpoint the Dryads mages and the like more easily?

>>339703
I was thinking more like massive/large lab equivalent freighters. Small labs are really inefficient, so yeah, that makes sense.

>>339729
basically this. Once we gtfo off gretz and have some less pressing research needs, spend some RP to make dedicated, purpose built lab ships. None of this converted freighter nonsense.

Okay, we REALLY need more time for the engine upgrade because we're kinda at the verge of losing. So we need a stalling tactic. One of two ways to do this:

A) Call for some kind of cease fire. They don't know we're just trying to buy time to get away and think we're actually invested in controlling the planet. We make up a pretense for temporary armistice that favors them somehow.

B) We resort to global terror. Threaten to incinerate all major civilian population centers (what few they have) on the planet instantly if they don't hold back their attacks. Hold their entire civilian population hostage, make them think we can actually pull it off, and even if they refuse, their civilians will be none too happy with being sold out by the ruling class.

>>339768
If we go with the second one then we could start it off by using a nuke on one of their population centers. Shows them that we can actually do it, we will do it and that we're really fucking serious.

Otherwise they might just assume that we don't have the balls for it and keep on pushing.

>>339780
Indiscriminately nuking population centres will go over real well with our attempts to improve Rebel morale, I'm sure. And totally won't backfire horribly with the ones now inamongst Splinter forces.

>>339782
I never said it was a good option. But you shouldn't try blackmail or ultimatums unless you're willing to follow up on them. Hell the Mages would probably not stop even if we did nuke their population centres. They would probably only view it as further justification that they were right from the start and fight even harder.

If we're going to get them to stay away and buy ourselves some time then we need some good old fashioned area denial. Make a strip of land that they can't pass through.

Or we could see if the Rebels would be willing to go for a suicide bombing option. We pull out our forces from one of their bigger bases, in return they get a nuke. They will be overwhelmed and loose, which is when they fire off the nuke.

Which might not have the effects we're after either since the Snarren reinforcements are pretty much unlimited.

So we might have to say fuck it, pull out and go to the moon until we got our stuff ready to leave properly.

Another poster suggested making a ton of consumer goods and airdropping them over civilian areas, and I have to agree with that plan.

Whatever remnants were found in the city we abandoned were enough to spark a small uprising, surely exposing even more of the population to our goods and technology would ensure massive rebellions.

We could also drop down GUNS. Heheheh.

so can anyone help me get what happened in the anomaly war? i noticed we were fighting about equal numbers but getting our asses handed by werewolf melee with shields or something close to it?

now it seems that we are abandoning the planet, hoping they wont chase us with some weird sort of portal shenanigans that we dont know of. this sounds so bad, im almost willing to torch the planet's atmosphere before leaving.

also why arent we dropping bases and city everywhere to mass forces and population? i know ed would roll his eyes every turn, but considering we have a nautical civilization in a nearby occupable planet literaly willing to buy anything from us, it could be a good idea to drop a few of us there.

also also, how is our genetic engineering levels? its time to make the next best hyoomans

>>/quest/277359
>You're still not getting it. The point of the attack is to....
Yes?
>You know what? Forget it. This is a cinematic game. I was stupid to try to bring operational level planning into this.
Like how?

>>/quest/278146
>Once the enemy has committed large numbers of troops in the attack, we extract our troops and then use the nukes ON THE MASSED ENEMY ARMY.
The use of nuclear weapons will undermine our relationship with the rebels.

>>340462
At that point the rebels would be largely wiped out anyway, aside from the refugees we have in our base. And if they decide that they don't want to tag along anymore then we could just leave them on the planet. If the rebels are going to die anyway then they can atleast serve some kind of purpose as they go.

What purpose is that, exactly?

Also, we may potentially be looking at 5-10k rebels integrating with the Splinter (compared with the non-Dryad population of 18k)

>>340462
>The use of nuclear weapons will undermine our relationship with the rebels.

I don't give a fuck about the rebels anymore. We're getting off this planet as soon as we can. The rebels are just a drain on resources and costing us manpower trying to protect them. They are finished. It's time we make a last stand on our terms and get out with as few casualties as possible. If we have to nuke a few thousand rebels to do it, then so be it.

>>340469
that is too many of them. as in, im pretty sure it will be impossible to keep them on check. we could be looking at a civil war once they realize that the regular citizen is as frail as a fruit they eat.

im not really enthusiastic about getting rebels or dryads at all. 1k of them will make literally impossible to screen out the spies that can make portals, let alone 5k.

>>340469
Who will be untrained. So we can't make them do work as workers and certainly not as professionals. And they will take up space.

Left there they can serve as bait and lure in more dryad mages and snarren for some nuking goodness.

My idea was to drag things out for the expressed purpose of getting like 10,000 refugees. Then spend a few years training all of them as workers.

10,000 dudes is worth 200 clone-tank-months. And they're all naturally as strong as minstr cyborgs.

Yeah 10k dudes is niiiiiice. I just hope we can actually house them, and our humans won't treat them like shit.

If we can actually get them aboard and survive long enough to get the UC colony finished, then it should be fine. With those 2400 new workers, we should be able to support a pop of 30k in comfort.

Of course, if we start throwing nukes around, or if we get our colony flattened before we can leave, then it'll all go to shit, but that's out of my hands.

>>340500
this is still based on the very aloof fact that they WOULD adapt to our lifestyle and that the number of spies will be somehow manageable.

give up on such a huge number. we may get a insignifcant number of them, less that 1k, and still have issues with adaptation

Long term planning. Assuming we get out of this mess we are going to need a lot of things to ensure this doesn't happen again.

1. Superheavy tanks. The enemy we face can field units even our MBTs have trouble with. Solution? Build a bigger tank! Design aims to have AT LEAST dual heavy weapon capacity.
2. Up-armour package for existing MBTs. Large ablative plates for added protection, concentrated mostly on the front. Some mobility loss, but can be ejected at any time.
3. Heavy Dropship. Newer bigger transports couldn't hurt. The increase in armour would allow them to land troops safely and the cargo capacity would allow them to carry superheavy vehicles. We need these anyways for evacuation and heavy industry.
4. Melee upgrade for power armoured infantry. Swords/axes etc are impractical. A set of punch daggers would not interfere with any other equipment and are small enough to retrofit into existing PA. Formalize boxing based fighting style.
5. Design powered exoskeletons/exo-armour. This would equate to miniaturized power armour for light infantry/commandos. Civilian models would add the strength implant characteristic, without the risk.
6. MLRS vehicles are great, but accuracy leaves something to be desired. Design smarter missiles (at a corresponding increase in cost). As well as infantry/BRIC portable spotting systems.
7. Refine our UAV design towards two ends. One would be a ground attack UAV designed to hug the terrain by flying at low altitude. Using high speed to keep it safe from AA attacks. Second design would be a high altitude scout and spotter UAV.
8. Redesign existing gunship to use vectored thrust instead of rotors. Same general capabilities but highly increased agility. (which should aid survival)
9. Mine/drone deployment missiles for MLRS system. We currently lack large scale area denial systems.

In terms of space endeavors.
1. Design a modular purpose-built freighter. A container ship essentially, for transporting large quantities of resources. Modules can be used as cargo space, or refitted into living quarters and building equivalents. They are designed to be as easy to reconfigure as possible to reduce cost.
2. Design a mobile orbital factory that can fold up and move as a starship. To save space it can store no resources and must be linked to freighters in order to function.
3. Come up with plans to enable asteroid mining.
4. Design railgun bombardment ship for pinpoint orbital fire support. Hopefully frigate sized. Mounting multiple redundant systems and replacement barrels.

This would give our spacefleet the capacity to sustain our total population while bringing everything we need with us. The bombardment frigates are designed as such because the carrier can't be everywhere at once.

>>340698
>7. Refine our UAV design towards two ends. One would be a ground attack UAV designed to hug the terrain by flying at low altitude. Using high speed to keep it safe from AA attacks. Second design would be a high altitude scout and spotter UAV.

While I agree we need better UAV's, low altitude is not the way to go. We have that already and they get shot down super easily and are expensive to replace. High speed is not what you want in a ground-attack craft; You want long loiter time over the target and less time constantly maneuvering to get back to the target after you blew past it.

But first of all before we redesign any of our UAVs, do we not have any sort of guided missile/smart bomb capability? Why aren't we mounting smart bombs on high altitude UAV's and using them to attack dyrad positions with presicion? The current situation is that the dyrads are "too spread out for bombing runs". I assume this is conventional dumb-bomb carpet bombing. But why are we still using that?

If the dyrads are SO spread out that even precision strikes will only get a couple of them, why are we even worried about attacks? Even with their portals it would take a hell of a long time to get a strong enough force together for a credible attacks seeing as how, being a primitive culture technology wise, it's a safe bet they lack field communications.

>Why aren't we mounting smart bombs on high altitude UAV's
They don't exist, nor do sensors to guide them from high altitude. The UAVs have to fly low enough to be shot down in order to direct fire, either from themselves or other sources.

>Massive lab is resistant to escape and hides research from the general populace underground
I heard you like herbivorous bunny girls, so I put a facility in your TBS so you can quest while you quest.

>>340698
Okay hang on here.

1-2) Ablative armor would be positively wonderful. Let's make that. But we do not need superheavy tanks. The bigger you make them, the less return you're going to get for the cost.
4-5) We do not plan on having infantry going into melee combat against Snarren or Dryads at this or any future point. These upgrades would be too late and too little.
6) MRLS are plenty accurate as they are. The problem is having any groupings of enemies to target in the first place.
7-8) I don't think flying works that way. Vectored thrust gives you greater speed for the same lift, not maneuverability. Fast UAVs have the problem Test and Anon pointed out.
9) That could work.
--
1) Isn't that what they are already?
2) I'd love this, but I don't think Ed intends on letting us have it anytime soon.
3) Already on that, chief.
4) You don't need to waste space on frigates for that. You could just make an array of satellites to do that, but do we really need to be chewing up MORE SC?

>>340713
So let's research them. Massive oversight right there.

>>340698
2. id rather increase their mobility. as power infantry, they stand in a role that doesnt exist, compared to a light vehicle that isnt fast or a medium vehicle that isnt armored and doesnt pack a punch.

4. power armor and vibroblades. ideally knives are ideal, but we can work with other compact weapons. axes are somewhat good if we can give them a 2 hand grip, and are more favored to cut armor that swords. another idea would be bucklers to try not to encumber the soldiers. this should also be cheap enought to be worthwhile.

5. why not "portable" power armor? something in the terms of a smaller BRIC, to empower weapons and carry extra armor.

6. the spotting system may be exactly what we are looking for. it could even help the UAVs to hit from orbiting range.

>>340713
Then maybe we should be researching high-resolution observer satellites instead of mucking about with UAVs at all.

>>340741
>So let's research them.
They'll just cost more SC, and we STILL won't be able to guide them from a safe altitude!

Plus, right now the main problem is that we don't have enough firepower. Smart bombs won't really help that.
>Then maybe we should be researching high-resolution observer satellites instead of mucking about with UAVs at all.
If we don't have cameras good enough to spot targets from 10,000 feet, what makes you think we can make a satellite to spot them from 100 miles?

Reworking list based on feedback:

1. A superheavy tank isn't designed to be more cost effective than deploying two MBTs. The point is to carry so much armour that it could survive hits that an MBT could not.
2. We need ablative armour in general. Up-armour packages could potentially apply to every military asset we have. Everything from light infantry to city walls. We already have advanced knowledge of ceramics and we are starting to discover alien alloys. I'm sure we could figure something out.
3. Design 2 new dropships. A combat dropship for direct landings into hotzones. And a pure transport dropship without armour or weapons for freight and passengers.
4. The melee upgrade for infantry is not intended to give us melee capable troops. We already know our soldiers can kill snarren by punching them really hard. So why not allow them to punch snarren really hard with sharp objects? Think of them the way you would a knife, not a sword. An upgraded weapon of last resort.
5. Str upgrades should be standard for all infantry anyway. Our implant process is still risky. Exoskeletons would cost more, but allow us to bypass that risk as well as "retrofit" soldiers and civilians.
6. We NEED a better array of spotting systems period, not just for MLRS and UAVs. Infrared and thermal sights. High powered optics etc. This is well within Earth technology. And don't our ships have some of this capability already? We might be able to miniaturize some stuff.
7. Okay scrap the attack UAV idea, we already have one. Focus on making a stealthy high altitude UAV. Add glider functionality to increase "hang time" and make it quiet. This goes hand in hand with better spotting systems.
8. I get your point, but vectored thrust can make a craft do things that would make a helicopter or jet stall. This upgrade would be pointless if increased maneuverability didn't translate into increased pilot survival.
9. Look into making cluster/MIRV/mine/drone munitions to outfit existing MLRS.
10. Design a high altitude long-ranged fire support gunship that can provide overwatch support. Think AC130. We would need optics to make this work.

1. As I understand it our current freighters are just hollowed out frigates. I'm sure we could come up with something better if we specifically designed a ship for the task. Our current freighters are capable of transporting everything we own. But they can't do so with enough luxury to keep everyone happy.

A simple design would be a block of engines. Modules could then be stacked on top like a jenga tower. They could contain whatever we wanted to put in them. The only limit being engine power. Example: (27 seconds in, awesome game btw)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n8Rt205Fn8

2. Mobile shipyards should be filed away under "far future when we require mass space assets". It would get really annoying if we had to scrap our factories every time we relocate. This would also allow us to manufacture stuff in deep space where we are unlikely to be discovered. Alternate idea: Retrofit existing Carrier with some orbital factory capability. If we had freighters to carry bulk cargo, we could use some of that space for something else.
4. Satellites would work great. I really hope one of these days we will stop by one of those SC rich planets that keep teasing us...

>Massive Lab
>Resistant to damage and infiltration/escape. Can hide research and assorted other secrets from general populace in here
I'm getting some pretty strong Umbrella Corp. vibes here :D

Well at least next time no angry civilians will go and whack Breaker prisoners.

On the issue of upgrading the gunship. I almost forgot that our current design has a little infantry transport capability. I feel that we should design a second gunship with the extra seats removed.

At the very least the newer gunship would have increased speed and agility thanks to the reduced size and weight. All of the enemy AA used so far is capable of swatting gunships out of the sky with a single hit. So the emphasis should be on avoiding danger. Vectored thrust could be a bonus in this regard. And passengers would not appreciate the flips and dodges you could do with it.

1 and 2. we have been long needing a better defense system. instead of a localized solution, lets try to find a actualy effective armor or shield.
4. maybe, we kinda have to think in future engangements. id rather have a vibroblade of sort researched now before we discover more snarren got better shields and now we cant plasma them because the explosive effect may hurt the soldiers.
5. research implants will fix that, along with pod clones not having that issue. i really liked the idea of power armor, but this sounds redundant with the implants.
6. meh. we should indeed try to find a engineering solution to orbital bombing. how about camera/radio guided bombs? its better that hoping for plenty of SC or forcing for a optic system that was already refused by ed.
7. no. UAVs use radio to communicate with the base. a stealth type would be impossible, but a UAV that could reach orbital capatibility by itself sounds useful, even if to transverse to the target in peace. kinda like a ICBM for small projectiles? deploy one from a base and reach anywhere on the planet and/or moons.
8. VTOL allows for landing anywhere, so soldiers can make a clearance and have a makeshift airport real quick. vectorial trhust isnt that great by itself, only when you add a element of surprise you can use that dogfight buff, also you cant dodge what you dont know of. we could as well add anti-missile turrents. something that launches grenades towards incoming projectiles, its more likely to work.
9. passive means of area denial so far are pretty much weak. we have all of those drones, and they suck either because they fail or they are weak. how about a deployable drone master, with control over several deployable turrents to peform area denial? it would work like a MBT but with several radio controlled turrents.
10. you mean orbital. we could do this with radio guided bombs.

1-2. Shield tech is probably a dead end, unless we can capture intact examples or figure out how they work. If magic is what makes it tick then we would be out of luck. Researching breaker shields would involve fighting and capturing higher ranked prisoners. Not an optimal solution (though probably inevitable).
4. I still think larger melee weapons are a dead end. Vibrotech is a good thing to have in general. But only to upgrade combat knives and the proposed arm blades.

I think we are missing the obvious solution. Did a big trench and fill it with barbed wire. In front of that set up large rows of sharpened stakes facing out. That should delay them long enough for us to bring enough plasma to bear. Any Snarren jumping over or trying to hide in the trench are easy to deal with. Torch em with fusion casters, or even better, fill the trench with beardy bobs!
5. Better and safer implants would render light power armour/power lifters obsolete. But if Ed will allow it I still think we should pursue this line of research. It could lead to all sorts of secondary applications. And it would also provide a firm groundwork for alien power armour/implants for our Nautiloid, Gester and Dryad allies who can't use most of our existing tech.
7. I still think stealth UAVs could work. It must be possible to fly high enough to avoid detection. Just knowing something is in the sky doesn't mean you can shoot it down. Dryads don't have radar, radio triangulation or even binoculars.
8. My point still stands though. Even if it wouldn't give us a huge advantage over our current enemy. We need to be constantly upgrading our assets.
9. Mines are super cheap and you can dump them EVERYWHERE. They would solve our snarren problem in a snap if we had enough of them. We could even phone it in on the design front and just mass produce Beardy Bobs without legs and scatter them all over the ground. What now poodles?

Our drones suck pretty hard I agree. The one exception is the Beardy Bob. But we need to be smarter about deploying them. Have them hide in pit traps or climb trees and drop when they detect an enemy.

For ranged combat I think we should dump the legged designs and make mini-tanks with tracks. Instead of a legged drone with a poorly aimed rifle or a spider drone with a pistol. We could probably make a mini tank with dual rifles.

For added effectiveness you could supplement the AI with remote control. Perhaps from a human operator in a nearby APC?
10. The problem with orbital railgun strikes and bombs in general is that they are almost useless against a well spread out enemy. The reason I suggested the gunship was that it can linger and suppress a much larger zone. If the enemy is spread over an area the size of a football field. An orbital strike would just leave a crater while a gunship could suppress the whole area. Keeping the enemy pinned or destroying them outright.

>>340782
>Our drones suck pretty hard I agree. The one exception is the Beardy Bob.
I disagree. They're super expensive and can kill a max of one snarren.
5 Beardy Bobs cost as much SC as a Starmaker bomb.