PEACE is trouble - should we help? ###Opinion check###

[Jamski]

From Kody :

[quote]How much are we bound to the cycon? I don't support allying ourselves to the cycon and quietly assisting the pirates too.

From the looks of things peace will get destroyed or seriously crippled if they don't receive assistance soon.

The things we would be interested in from the peace are.
1. adaptive economics (for PEG)
2. their maps
3. peace as a submissive to the hive

Things we may be able to give them assuming we don't have our hands tied by the cycon.
1. ecological engineering
2. a needlejet prototype (maybe turn 2156 or 2157 to arrive in one of their bases)
3. full protection from their enemies + a base or two to prevent them from being destoryed if they become submissive.

The drones can possibly give them HEC, but they need to negotiate that with the drones.

I thought about sending them a plasma armor prototype (which we have now). However, a needlejet would arrive much sooner due to transport time.

I estimate that the core bases of the peace will all be taken over in about 7 turns. Peace may be completely destoryed in 12 turns if the cycon decide to hunt all the bases down.[/b]

On the basis of these comments from Kody (which I personally agree with) what are our feelings on a rescue mission for the Pirates?

• Let them die.
• Help them with our millitary (join fight vs. CyCOn)
• Try to get the CyCon to leave them alive.
• Help the CyCon kill them.
• Send tech and/or units but stay neutral.
• Other option.

-Jam

[Micha]

I´d rather step in at the Pirate´s side, but since we´re not prepared for a war I only voted "send the pirates techs and units".

[Snowflake]

I would like our PEACE ambassador to get more communications with the PEACE before we sent out an official reply, see if being submissive is an option for the PEACE. If this is an option than we could give them our full support in the same time when we try to put on diplomatic pressure on the CCs. This to me do not violate our integrity. For helping PEACE would be equal to protect our own property. For example we have every right to ask a pactmate to stop attack a Hive base.

This means several things to me.

First, Is PEACE this desperate? Will they accept in ideology of being submissive, or will they choose to fight until their last blood. Will waiting till even later before we intervene make them change?

Second, While we could roleplay to CC that PEACE had surrendered to us and so ask them to stop attcking, we will have to face the risk that the CC is mad and becomes hostile to us. Do we want to go there? Again if the PEACE only have couple bases left it may be easier for the CC to accept.

Third, When I say full suport, we don't really have much military force. The only thing we can do is the diplomatic front and the prototype units/techs. Will this be sufficient to save the PEACE? If we can't save the PEACE then there's not much use in getting the CCs mad.

If surrender is not an option, we need to think about if there's anything we can do while not sacrifice the Hive's integrity by secretly helping a pactmate's enemy and thus change our neutral stance.

[Jamski]

We have to consdider the meta-game though. If CyCon get all the PEACE bases, they'll be bigger than us - and if we give the PEACE tech, CyCOn will tech-steal it on captured base. We'd better be bloody careful if we give 3-armour or synth foss fuels or doc:AP.

-Jam

[Snowflake]

This is indeed a good point.

[Kody]

Cycon already have 3-armor so giving them that doesn't matter. The cycon will soon have synth foss fuels so cycon can't really absorb missile once they already have it, and I think we're better off sending the peace an prototype needlejet than giving them the tech.

If they agree to be submissive. There's plenty of time for us to save the peace. Ask the drones to give HEC to the peace. Once air power comes along we send some air support to the peace, and post war get the peace to build more colony pods. Ofcourse the peace will lose a few more bases no matter what action we take.

[Kody]

On one side having peace as a submissive has a certain cool factor, and we'll be able to walk in and out of the peace private forum. And whatever the drones are able to achieve, we'll be able to say we got one better because they don't have a submissive faction. It will also be fun rescuing another faction as this war while not threatening us will be quite a challenge as it's a race against time.

On the other side the turn playing will start going much faster without the peace and bring this game to a close sooner. We'll have to give up our alliance with the cycon. Also we'll be commited to war against university, data angels and cycon.

For me benefits are fairly evenly balanced. Only one route requires a bit more effort in negotiations.

[Vev]

Well since an alliance of only 3 is allowed victory then do we accept PEACE as our third member? Once we made them submissive there can be no other unless we treacherously break off the deal when the time comes to allow another into the fold?

Is relations with the CC or Uni in such a state that a co-operative victory alliance is no longer possible?

Me personally, I just want the war to be prolonged.

[Octavian X]

My only concern is that any public show of support for PEACE might be considered by CyCon an Act of War on our part. We should think carefully, as it wouldn't be in our best interest to make Cycon angry at us.

[Voltaire]

I am once again of the opinion that for the interests of the Hive we cannot idly sit by and watch PEACE fall to the CyCon. It seems neither in the best interests of the Hive to have a strong PEACE or strong CyCon. I would like to see the status quo maintained between those two factions. Hence if intervention were to take place in the PEACE-CyCon War it seems fit the Hive not get involved directly. We should supply PEACE with necessary technology and troops to fend off CyCon attack, and to retake their rightful holdings, but no more. Furthermore we should attempt to exert diplomatic pressure on both sides to end this conflict. We can ask the Drones to call the Planetary Council into session (RP of course) where the other factions can discuss what to do about the PEACE-CyCon War. From an RP perspective we have every right to involve ourselves under the UN charger which is still in effect

[Kody]

Well since an alliance of only 3 is allowed victory then do we accept PEACE as our third member?

Who said peace will be winning. Submissive means you can't win anymore.

Is relations with the CC or Uni in such a state that a co-operative victory alliance is no longer possible?

The Archaic is firmly anti-hive after all our anti-university anti-Archaic posts.

Cycon joint-victory alliance I don't know about anymore. There was something during the hive riots about it, but the results got lost when the Jamski trial came up.

Personally after the cycon-Jamski incident I think I've gone from "pro-cycon" to "I don't care about cycon". Mainly because I've completely given up on any kind of real alliance that the hive can agree on.

My only concern is that any public show of support for PEACE might be considered by CyCon an Act of War on our part. We should think carefully, as it wouldn't be in our best interest to make Cycon angry at us.

Why?

[Enigma_Nova]

The CyCon are going to have D:AP soon so we'd better either get their support or blow them up.
We should find their stance to the PUT. We should try to prevent any non-ally from getting MMI.

We should declare war on the PUT now before anything else happens.
If we call a council to stop war that sort of eliminates our prospect for war in the future does it not? We'll have two techstarved factions basically going at it for transcend, as our enemies will block a diplo victory and we can't kick their asses.

I'm in favour of pressing for a world war right now.
We have an industry base that no-one on this planet can match.
We also have MMI, and most probably we'll go for fusion and fusion lasers.

We can get PEACE support. That may not be much but it's a lack of a potential opponent.
At the worst, CyCon and PUT are against Hive and PEACE.
PUT are not geared for an invasion. We'll conquer them and conquer them quickly, for it is all that we can do.
The CyCon will surely not like having The Hive breathing down their necks, and will probably want peace more than anything.

Speaking of PEACE, Get us the PEG. That could be sort of a payment, and we also get to have the Maritime Control Centre.
Attack fast before they can blow the bastard up.

---

I reckon we should take the cloudbase AND the cyborg factory as soon as possible. See what the drones think.
We might want to delay declaring war on all of planet until we find out what the Drones think about this.

I'd agree with Jamski. In preference to defending PEACE, if we can provoke the Drones into attacking us while we have these SPs, we'll have a strong upper hand.

---

My agenda:
Get Adaptive for PEG
Get MMI for Cloudbase and Cybernetic
If the PEACE approve, attack the PUT for bases
Attack the CyCon for the Maritime, and to prevent them from growing too strong.
If the Drones complain about the SPs, we tell them it's dog eat dog here on Chiron. If they stay friendly so be it. If not, we have crawlers and Cloudbase on our side.

We should delay an attack on the CyCon until after we take those 2 MMI SPs and see what the Drones think about it.
We may want to send tech to the PEACE to help them in the meantime. Plasma Armor is good, as are missiles.

Also, we'll have to see what the PEACE think about the PUT. What the pact means. This must be done before we invade, to see if they approve.
If not then Roze is an alternative.
Or we can stuff the PEACE and help the CyCon, as PEACE declaring war on us keeps our integrity intact.

So that's my agenda. A hostile takeover of planet, courtesy of BOTH MMI SPs.

[Kody]

Since when did peace suddenly become our permi-pact allies?

Just because we've going to be a bit competative with the MMI SPs doesn't mean the drones aren't our allies anymore.

Buster turned the cycon down on a fossil fuels trade. I believe that cycon will only get fossil fuels in turn 2154, and probably won't finish their air power until another 6-8 years.

[Kody]

Okay I read your post again and realised my mistake. Unfortunately I can't edit my posts.

Peace haven't said whether they would be willing to be submissive.

Also while getting competative with MMI I don't want to throw too much in the drone's face. Rather I believe getting cloudbase and then offering the cyborg factory to the drones + another one or two other SPs should keep them happy. Racing to build the cyborg factory before the drones will swallow alot of our crawlers.

[Enigma_Nova]

But Kody... Bioenhancement Centers...

Hey, if instead of competing we merge the two factions by allowing one to take over the other, then wouldn't that effectively allow both of us access to the SPs that we build?

I'm about to get shot for suggesting that, aren't I?

Anyway...
We (Hive) could use The Living Refinery and The Cloning Vats.
The Longevity vaccine is useful to us but I'd probably let the Drones have that, while we get the Ascetic Virtues.
(+1 Police means a lot, going from 2 police to 3)
PEG is really our pet project...

So we can take:
Cloudbase, PEG, Ascetic, Vats, Refinery.
They can take:
All the other stuff

Sound good?

[Kody]

Hey, if instead of competing we merge the two factions by allowing one to take over the other, then wouldn't that effectively allow both of us access to the SPs that we build?

I'm about to get shot for suggesting that, aren't I?

Nope you're not. I seriously considered it. However, there are two reasons for not doing that.

Firstly, the hive and drones have different strengths. That means our two seperate factions can play on their seperate strengths and will be stronger for it. Also we won't be able to do many of the tech cost reductions we've been using recently.

Secondly, we'll have to organise the whole issue of who's in charge of the turns. That would be a very big headache.

So we can take:
Cloudbase, PEG, Ascetic, Vats, Refinery.
They can take:
All the other stuff

I would agree with that completely. However, someone needs to market it to the drones. Also I'm not 100% sure we can get PEG.

[Jamski]

We can ask the Drones to call the Planetary Council into session (RP of course) where the other factions can discuss what to do about the PEACE-CyCon War. From an RP perspective we have every right to involve ourselves under the UN charger which is still in effect

Its worth a try - but I think the CyCon are out for blood.

-Jam

[Snowflake]

I agree that the Planetary Council is a great idea. If it is decided that the war should be stopped, it will give us a good reason if we need to break away from the CC pact. (As it is now, I don't see a need to break the CC pact yet.)

I am a little unclear what we are discussing. My understanding is that we are suggesting the PEACE surender to us, but they stay as a separate faction. And we can put press on CC to stop the war since the PEACE is now under our wings. However PEACE will not be a member of the final winners.

It seemed to me that some people were suggesting a little different things, like we would be actually merging as one team? Or that we would be going into PEACE forums, etc. My understanding is that they would still be a individual team. And still carries their own votes in planetary councils and such. Just that we are the protectors and they swear their loyalty to us.

I still think that this may not even be a possibility for us. The PEACE are role played as a bunch hot blood captains, if I were a member of them I may not consider surrending an option. So before we discuss this any further, I really think we need to contact the PEACE first.

If surrendering is not an option, then I think we have to choose whether we want to assist the PEACE still. There are several levels of assistant in this sense.

One, tech trade. As long as it is a fair trade, I don't see the we have violated the Hive's integrity of being neutral in this war of two of our pactmates. We may actually want to let the CC know any finalized trade to show them we are only after gain for ourselves and have not been doing anything behind their back. We will also trade with CCs according to the same principle.

Two, if we can get the Planetary Council to vote for a stop of the war, then we can actually assist the PEACE more without our integrity being violated. For the UN charter has a higher priorty than the pact agreement between any two factions.

All the above discussions, is based upon my belief of the Hive's own interest, not based upon an accessment whether we are closer to either of the two factions. As far as I'm concerned, we want to be friendly to both of them but so far no factor has tilted my balance in favor of any one. In other words, I have changed my pro-CC stance to a neutral stance, and do not seek to include CC in a three way joint victory any more.

[Mead]

Originally posted by HongHu

***

All the above discussions, is based upon my belief of the Hive's own interest, not based upon an accessment whether we are closer to either of the two factions. As far as I'm concerned, we want to be friendly to both of them but so far no factor has tilted my balance in favor of any one. In other words, I have changed my pro-CC stance to a neutral stance, and do not seek to include CC in a three way joint victory any more.

I am concerned about the future of the two warring factions only to the extent it affects the Hive's own interests.

I am all for Tech Trading, to our benefit, with both of the warring parties.

The one thing we should try to avoid is a world where CyCon eliminates Peace and takes over all of their bases, becoming the biggest faction. Successful aggressive military expansion will only increase their appetite for more wars of conquest. If CyCon wins the war and takes all of Peace, the Drones and us will have to rely upon each other to better survive.



Mead

[Enigma_Nova]

CyCon's next stopover will surely be Miriam.

But, with Hive getting Angels and Drones getting PUT, my bet is that we'll more than hold our own.
Plus we can simply ring up miriam and say "How's it going? Look, here's 3 armor and missles. Go nuts."
Because as we know Mim was p!ssed at the CyCon, and giving her some attack capacity can stall them for a while.

We might upgrade our southern boat to a missile / plasma boat and turn it over to the PEACE to keep them afloat for a while.
Heck once CyCon get synth fuels we can probably have the Drones send them synth fuels.

If we can prolong this war until our conquest of the Uni and Roze is done, then we'll have a pot shot at mim before the CyCon can get to her. Or a pot shot at the CyCon themselves.

---

from PEACE we want a cruiser prototype and Adaptive doctrine.
We also want a distraction for the CyCon, so we can go to war on our own.

We should upgrade our lower ship to plasma, and send this to the PEACE. We might also ask the Drones to send them Synth Fuels right after the CyCon research it.

I think we should try to get miriam to attack the CyCon, just to push them a little further. But it seems she will only be bought off by 300 ECs... a hefty price to pay.
(On a side note someone payed her to attack the Drones!)

The Idea is, we tie up the CyCon for as long as possible.

---

We also want the ever-useful Adaptive Economics. However, we can't trade tech we don't have!
We'd need to trade serious military tech - but guess what that's Drone business.

We might be able to trade infrastructure tech to the CyCon, offering Eco Eng AND Env Eco might just tip the balance in our favour...

We could explain that we want Adaptive Econ, because we want Planetary Econ, and The Ascetic Virtues.
They'd be less defensive about their precious PEG this way (and hey it's a plausable request seeing how close we are to MMI, we'd have something else to research).

---

Tie up CyCon and Drones. Might want to buy Adaptive from CyCon, with the Planetary Econ sham, or grovel it from the PEACE with our wimpy infrastructure tech.
It would be nice if we could do a 'round robin' trade with the drones:
Tell the PEACE we're giving the Drones something nice (unnamed), in exchange for the Drones sending them HEC (and later Synth fuels).
We want the PEACE to send us Adaptive Econ in return.

This sounds hella shifty, but we get Neural soon. It's believable that this is part of our round robin trade.

---

So I've typed out my policy again.

TASKS TO DO:
1. Find out Uni's Relations with PEACE and CyCon
2. Ask CyCon about EnvEco/EcoEng for Adaptive Econ (claim it's to research Planetary Econ).
3. Ask PEACE if they'll take our infrastructure techs for Adaptive
4. If not, tell them about our 'round robin' trade. They will get Plasma from the Drones and they pay us adaptive.
We ask the drones to send them Plasma to keep them alive, gratis. (What a nice deceptive tactic!)
5. We need 300 ECs to buy mim off for an attack on the CyCon, which is probably not worth it, but is an idea nonetheless.
6. We attack and conquer the PUT
7. We attack and conquer the Angels
8. We see if PEACE are interested in being submissive. (Long shot)

These can be completed in any order. Might I ask people to refrain from chatting about the deceptions to the Drones and the CyCon? They could turn out in our favor.