Peacekeeping Operations: Flaming MindWorms, FungusBatMan!

[MrWhereItsAt]

All Governors need to read carefully as the Office for Peace and Armed Reconciliation is requesting additions to your build queues. These are important and some are URGENT.

Right, here are some thoughts on the military orders I'd like to offer out for the next set of turns. Feedback and drawing attention to my errors is in fact welcomed, and you will NOT be press-ganged into Fungus-forming near Tacticus Academy for pointing out my mistakes, no matter WHAT you saw me do.

Bringing home the (Worm) Bacon

Cyclops: the Disciplined Trance Plasma Garrison will attack the MindWorm - 151:80 odds (best with those units)

Aurora: the Missile Interceptor will attack the MindWorm - 5:3 odds (also best)

Tacticus Academy: nothing can reach the worms here, so I am moving the formers out of the way as much as possible. The Chiroformer at 2,88 will move to Tacticus Academy (West x3). The Chiroformer at 0.88 will mve to 2,88 ( East - still in harms way). The Plasma Former at 2,88 will move to 4,86 (East). The Police Sentinels in Tacticus Academy will move to 2,88 to protect the Chiroformer there.

This is temporary only. I am requesting the governor in charge of TacAc URGENTLY change production to an Empath Rover and rush it if necessary. I'm pretty sure defending those crawlers and formers is of importance to the region so I hope I will be granted this request. The turn it is built the Empath Rover will take on the closest worm, which is hopefully the only one after the first attacks (and loses) to the Cop Sentinels at 2,88.

Preventative Measures

In order that any worm attacks are contained as quickly and with as few losses or changes to production queues in the future as possible, I request that the following be added to the build queues wherever possible. Governors, this is for the protection of your own citizens, improvements and production. Don't make me wave a big "I told you so" stick when the first worm of millions looks up at you from your sald lunch.

I want Empath Rovers (Fusion, Clean) in

New Tassagrad
Cyclops
New Apolyton
Ankh-Moprpork
Mysidia
as an absolute minimum. This has been planned to be a minimum tolerable defence for many of our vulnerable/highly productive cities. I also urge Governors to seriously look at their areas and decide for themselves whether they can risk not having more defenders than these.

Smoking out the Hive
The plan to rip the sweetest cities out of the Hive is a ways off, but we still need to build the troops. To this end, I am asking the Governors to add the units to their queues ASAP. Remember, the sooner we have the military, the sooner we take Hive cities, the sooner we can restore peace and can relax against the fear of Hive incursions stuffing up your drone allocations and killing your formers.

I want 8-10 Fusion Gun (eventually Shard) Clean Fusion Choppers with Radar. This must be prototyped I also want 8-10 Clean AAA Fusion reactor Infantry with Silksteel or best available armour to reinforce taken cities. The Fusion Laser was chosen because, although it jacks up the cost of a Helicopter from 50 for the same with Chaos guns to 60 with the Fusion Laser, most highly productive cities can still build these in 2 turns once the prototype has been finished. The Choppers will rendezvous in UN Slippery Ground as soon as they are built, ideally not ending their turn in unprotected locations. These Choppers will attack targets of opportunity within 2 squares radius of UNSG with impunity in order to build up their morale. In the rare case that they land away from UNSG, the Interceptors placed within that city will deal with any annoying Hive needlejets. Such targets would include the Hive units on the nearby land and the former visible. The Infantry will proceed to Egregion to rehome and then eventually be transported to the Hive shores. Requests for an escorting flotilla of Cruisers and early warning sea vessels will be dealt with later.

The bases I request that build these Choppers/Infantry are:

Tacticus Academy, Terminal Dogma, UNPD and Antioch. Other bases, perhaps Twin Peaks, are invited to contribute their resources to the peacekeeping efforts as well.


That's all for now. I will eventually make these requests to the Governors concerned.

[Cedayon]

Hmm, I'll review JV to see where some empath rovers can be fit in. When we get our mag tubes up response will be a snap, so long as we have enough empath rovers.

to the chopper in TD, I'll keep it in mind when I make my build orders.

Thanks for letting us know, MWIA.

[Cedayon]

Just to be curious, what constitutes an "Empath Rover"?

We can build a clean, empath, 1/1/2 fusion rover for 70 mins (50 for fission), and can add either chaos gun or best armor to that for no cost (so we could make it 8/1/2 or 1/4/2 for the same 70 mins while still clean empath fusion).

[Cedayon]

*going for 3 posts in a row*

Just checked out JV in the '71 save.

I can give you military production starting in 2272 (one turn from now) in
Concordia (32 mins/turn) with no special funding
Terminal Dogma (34 mins/turn) with no special funding
Pandemonium (28 mins/turn, increased to 34 easily) with 28ecs to rush the Aero. Complex there.
Sheathed Sword (29 mins/turn) with 64ecs to rush the Cent. Preserve there.
Valhalla (34 mins/turn) with 152ecs to rush the Research Hospital there (or immediately if I skip the RH, which I'd rather not do, or in 4 turns if it's allowed to build normally)

What units do you want built in those cities? Is a 5-unit commitment enough from JV for the turnchat?

edit- the rush costs above are for no mineral overrun, add 20 mins each for 10 min overrun, which I feel is probably important enough if I'm going to be making units (which respond poorly to rushing).

[DeathByTheSword]

/me doesnt have anything really interesting to say but ust wanted to be sure Cedayon didnt get 4 posts in a row......

to building up the troops

[Cedayon]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
* DeathByTheSword doesnt have anything really interesting to say but ust wanted to be sure Cedayon didnt get 4 posts in a row......

Should I take that as a challenge?

[lucky22]

10-4 on the empath rover in Ankh Morpork.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Cedayon
*going for 3 posts in a row*

Just checked out JV in the '71 save.

I can give you military production starting in 2272 (one turn from now) in
Concordia (32 mins/turn) with no special funding
Terminal Dogma (34 mins/turn) with no special funding
Pandemonium (28 mins/turn, increased to 34 easily) with 28ecs to rush the Aero. Complex there.
Sheathed Sword (29 mins/turn) with 64ecs to rush the Cent. Preserve there.
Valhalla (34 mins/turn) with 152ecs to rush the Research Hospital there (or immediately if I skip the RH, which I'd rather not do, or in 4 turns if it's allowed to build normally)

What units do you want built in those cities? Is a 5-unit commitment enough from JV for the turnchat?

edit- the rush costs above are for no mineral overrun, add 20 mins each for 10 min overrun, which I feel is probably important enough if I'm going to be making units (which respond poorly to rushing).

I'm away from the save ATM, but from my tired thoughts when I posted these requests, 5 from the one region is excellent. I foresaw potentially a long uphill battle convincing Governors of the need to stop beautifying their bases temporarily and to build some weapons. If we got that commitment from every region each set of turns, we would have a taskforce within two chats.

As for what exactly to build, let's go with Choppers in bases with Aero Complexes and AAA Defensive Infantry in the others.

Thanks for the prompt replies, Cedayon and lucky - I will make more formulated requests later.

[Cedayon]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt
I foresaw potentially a long uphill battle convincing Governors of the need to stop beautifying their bases temporarily and to build some weapons.

Maniac's done quite a job developing Jedinica Vrijstaat, to the point that there's only so much "beautifying" left... there's really only 4 main things on my agenda (aside from 'forming and keeping infrastructure up to spec) : Loads of crawlers, loads of formers (if needed), loads of satellites, and loads of military (if needed).

If we got that commitment from every region each set of turns, we would have a taskforce within two chats.

It's unlikely regions like Solaris and Akiria will be able to do that without suffering an unacceptable loss of economic/infrastructural growth. JV, Centralis, Aurillion, and Twin Sea can more than make up for it.

I can give you a lot more than 5 units this turnchat, if you want, probably closer to 20 if I really get the factories cranking (and some cheap units are thrown in there). In fact, I'm not averse to that idea if it means I'll be able to concentrate on crawlers and satts in the remaining turnchats of the term.

As for what exactly to build, let's go with Choppers in bases with Aero Complexes and AAA Defensive Infantry in the others.

I figure by Choppers you mean 10-1-12 fusion clean radar choppers, and I think by AAA Defensive Infantry you mean 1-4-1 AAA clean infantry. This right? What about empath rovers? empath choppers (they cost the same as the rovers, 70 for fusion empath clean)?

[Maniac]

Cyclops: the Disciplined Trance Plasma Garrison will attack the MindWorm - 151:80 odds (best with those units)

Aurora: the Missile Interceptor will attack the MindWorm - 5:3 odds (also best)

How do you come to these odds? When I try to attack in the save game to see the odds I get the message the odss are strongly against us. I'd rather say the odds are 4 to 5 or so against us, taking into account fusion reactors don't help against worms.

[MrWhereItsAt]

--Sigh-- Is there really a difference between the SMAC installed with SMAC-X and the original SMAC? Because that is what I have. I thought if you chose the option to play the original AC in the SMAX startup screen it gave you just that. Or have we been playing with a non-patched game?

[Maniac]

I don't know. I also have SMAX but select original SMAC at the startup screen.
If we have the same version, I really can't explain why we get different battle odds.

[Maniac]

Ah yes MWIA, could you please make sure to put in your orders to rehome all offensive choppers asap to Egregion? Otherwise Jedinica will have massive drone riots.

[Cedayon]

Originally posted by Maniac
Ah yes MWIA, could you please make sure to put in your orders to rehome all offensive choppers asap to Egregion? Otherwise Jedinica will have massive drone riots.

Yea, I think the standing orders are for all new military units that could possibly go on the offensive be sent to and rehomed to Egregion asap... and that better be done with all those choppers I'm building, or I'll be even less happy than my people

[GeneralTacticus]

As long as it's done quickly (which it will), all you'll have to worry about wil be some brief breaks in GAs.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Damn. I thought loading an original SMAC save in the SMAX game reverted the game to SMAC. But no - for some reason SMAX gives different odds for the same conflict between the same two units. WTF?!?!?!

I have to rethink - Aurora can no longer attack that worm with even a decent chance for success.

New idea: Crawler at 20,108 (SE of Aurora) must move somewhere else to keep out of harms' way. I request that the Crawler being built in Aurora be changed to an Empath Rover in case the worm just pillages this turn instead of attacks. Next turn, if the worm is still there,
attack it with the Empath Rover. If the odds are shite,

/me tries to find a Command Centre

ARGH! I guess we just hope the worm kills itself against our defences as there ARE none in the area.


Cyclops: Attack with the Empath Rover at 7:6 odds. The crawler at 10,118 (SE of Cyclops) should move away for protection.

Now to make the full orders.

[GeneralTacticus]

Okay, just about your requests (since I seem to be acting Governor of Centralis currently): I've ordered an Empath Rover in Antioch as opposed to NA, as it will be built just as fast and will have a higher morale level (as Antioch has a Command Centre and NA doesn't).

[Maniac]

I'd like to mention I've changed the Akirian build orders. An empath rover is now the first production item in Aurora. I'd like MWIA's opinion though whether I should build a "2e-1-2 empath, clean" or a "8e-1-2*2 empath". These models both cost 50 mins, so they can be finished next turn in Aurora without much rushing.

I've also changed my 4e-1-10 chopper (which costed 30 mins, 50 less than the 8e-1-10 proposed by MWIA ) design to a "<8e>-1-8*2 SAM Empath Chaos Rotor" to prevent pacifism drones.