Long Term Projects Thread

Jamski · October 2, 2003, 03:41

This is just an attempt to gather together ongoing or possible or even purely insane long term plans for the Hive. This is all conceptual, i.e. no actuall idea how or when the plans could be carried out. Its basically an ideas shop.

Dealing with the Uni - build probes, build foils, infilterate, steal tech, get Impact rovers, attack.
Dealing with the Uni 2 - build probes, build foils, infilterate, see what they have, make contacts, make friends.
Pirates - gotta get some probe defenders up in coastal bases pretty soonish, I'd say, then perhaps a foil probe...
Pirate defence - they can strike anywhere with marine corps - we should consider what our defensive policy should be. I suggest a "fire brigade" to recapture bases as there's no way we could defend one if they REALLY try for it with 20 marines...
Drones - we need to suggest former sharing policy to take advantage of their WP
Base expansion - time to fill out the continent - will it be big enough?
Base expansion 2 - sea bases? are they safe with the pirates around? should we fill in and make inland seas?
Exloration - perhaps there's an empty continent to the south or east that we could colonise. Raise land to it? Use transports? Offer map trade to the Pirates?
Longterm victory - we're not heading for trancending, or ec win, are we? This will be a straight-up fight at some point between us and Drones vs Pirates and CyCon. Who knows yet where the Uni stand - we could certainly benefit from meeting them.
Anyway - at some point there will be a massive world war with two sides, and we should play with the aim of preparing for that day. If we have beautiful bases but cannot fight to win then we will be doomed. However, if we go millitary crazy now, we'll be lacking in production and tech when the war does come. We need to judge the moment correctly Comrades

Comments? More Ideas? Just list them up as a row of ramdom thoughts - just little things to bear in mind for us all.

-Jam

Kody · October 2, 2003, 04:33

Air power is when we seriously start gearing up military in our forward bases. Tech will still be a priority until we get MMI, as the bioengineering centre and the cloud base can be critical.

Straight after MMI we go for bioengineering and start increasing the number of formers to at least 150. In my experience you can never have enough formers. If we run out of land to terraform we just raise some more.

From there expand like a weed on steroids. Build lots of small bases with maximum packing (only 3 useable squares per base), use the insane amount of support for an army. When bases are 3 away from the front line abandon every 2nd base and add the colony pod to one of the old bases or use the colony pod to plant a new base to extend the front line.

Quote:

Drones - we need to suggest former sharing policy to take advantage of their WP

They just don't have the support....

For base expansion I think we get to 30 or 29 bases and then stop. We can then do partial pop booming at that stage. After the partial pop booming we start expanding again. This time by raising land. If we hit land with an AI or another faction we simply roll right over them.

Micha · October 2, 2003, 07:27

Wow. That sounds like Borg tactics. And we are "the Hive", aren´t we?

I love those future plans. But why aren´t we planning on using our industry to build the more expensive "clean reactor" units? Each base could build 20 of them without having to bay support...

I always use them to build up my military. Then again, I have never won on Transcend...

Kody · October 2, 2003, 07:43

Well because I've been reading up and asking about strategies. Clean reactor units aren't very fesiable during a war against human players. For formers we want clean. However, only our most interior bases might use clean military units.

In other cases we should plan to constantly lose units and replace them. We won't have the best units as our tech isn't good enough. However, we will have the most units and getting the most units isn't done by making them clean.

Jamski · October 2, 2003, 08:15

We're the Hive so we can afford to keep making lots of units as we have MASSIVE support compared to the other factions. We don't need to make them clean, becasue we can make twice as many and just get half of them killed really quickly, like russia in WW2 - give one rifle to every two soldiers, becasue half the men will die before they get a chance to shoot anyway. And Russia won, yes? Even though the Germans had far superior tech.

-Jam

Snowflake · October 2, 2003, 17:11

I love the idea of hundreds of clean formers. Russia won because they have high morale. Does Hive has that in it?
A traditional Chinese military strategy is to attack who is close to you and make friends with who is far from you. Because to attack an enemy far away is not easy I suppose. From this I would say we need to attack univ rather than make friends with them. We do need an enemy at some point don't we?

Voltaire · October 2, 2003, 18:29

HongHu touched on a very good point; we are much more akin to China than to the Soviet Union. Our military will be large, but our troop transport capabilities will be hindered because of the Pirates. If we intend to attack enemies far away we need to secure the seas via a large navy.

Kody · October 2, 2003, 19:19

Just a question how did "we think it's the university" turn into "the university is close by"? I know it wasn't me that is stating that.

Snowflake · October 2, 2003, 22:56

Isn't the faction with the B's quite close to us? And I thought they are the university? Well if I was wrong in that, then I have to correct myself, instead saying let's invade university, I should say "let's invade the faction with the B's".

I hope it's not CC though, for I have a soft spot in my heart for them.

Micha · October 3, 2003, 02:47

Quote:

Originally posted by HongHu
... let's invade the faction with the B's.

I hope it's not CC though, for I have a soft spot in my heart for them.

Yeah, me too...

So in case it is the CyCon, we should just enslave their population. No slaughters.

Jamski · October 3, 2003, 07:51

Well, maybe a few slaughters of the leadership... but no wholesale massaccares, eh?

-Jam

Vander · October 3, 2003, 16:33

How feasable is it to use drop pods or air transports? Instead of going through the sea, just fly over the pirates.

Googlie · October 3, 2003, 21:31

The problem is the range (or lack of it) - 8 tiles for a drop unit and only 5 for a noodletrannie (or 5 repeating for a choppertrannie)

And the airborne trannie can only carry 1 unit and can't unload from the air - just in a base

Of course, after building the Space Elevator, you can drop anywhere

G.