Important - Your input needed for tech research.

Kody · July 29, 2003, 10:41

Quote:

We are certainly interested in future/ongoing joint research efforts.

I must admit that we have not yet determined where we want to go next with research. Our early discussion on the subject got no further than beelining to IA.

Going from memory - we will have the prerequisites (if any are needed) for:

Progenitor Psych
Doc: Mobility
Social Psych
Biogenetics

High Energy Chemistry
Non-linear Mathematics
Polymorphic Software

Many, if not all of these technologies are valuable, either inherently or as stepping stones to other techs...

A level three armor is very nice to have! (Both for its defensive ability and for the added level it pemits to upgraded crawlers)

A4 weapon...though a virtual dead end in regard to research, if one of us were to get rover rushed, having impact counterattack capability could prove vital.

Social Psych is the first step toward mineral and energy restriction lifiting. (and Ethics, which we will need to boom)

Biogenetics is very important for its recycling tanks...particularly for Hive, I should imagine.

Is flex the most important application we have to pursue? Why?

Is the most efficient way to pursue our chosen applicaton(s) by joint leapfrogging or by seperate paths and exchanging at a later point in time?

At any event, we Drones must decide where we want to go next.

Repeating - It is certainly our desire to research cooperatively with the Hive and to share all the benefits of that cooperative research. The 'If' qusestion is answered with an unqualified yes. The 'where' and 'how' questions must be soon resolved.

- Mongoose

The hive needs to brainstorm on which techs we want and why.

Think of all useful techs that we want to get, no further than "Air Power".
Then state reasons why we would want to get them. Then give each a rating out of 10 for how important that tech is.

Give all your ideas. Not just the tech you think is the most important.

Kody

Jamski · July 29, 2003, 14:32

10 - Eco engineering.

This is my priority.

So reccommend we leapfrog up the Social Psych, Ethics route with the Drones. Lots of good stuff there, and FORGET about flex, mob, impact, lasers, 3 armour and all that crap. We need to build a solid infrastructure, and when we meet the pirates, which is just a matter of how many turns, we'll have something to offer them for the flex and mob techs.

Just my 3 cents

-Jam

Rokossovky · July 29, 2003, 21:22

The problem with your proposed route, Jamski, is that it creates a large imbalance. I recongize the requirement to concentrate on a strong base right now, but that DOES NOT mean ignoring our defensive needs. We can, of course, lean in a certain direction, but we do need to address all aspect of our society. For the immediate future, if we were to research Impact ASAP, and then in the nfuture synthmetal, it would keep us safe for a while and would sucessfully balance out the scale (from my knowledge we are getting synth anywho sometime down the line, when we feel we want it from the drones, so all we'd need to do is stick Impact in 1-2 techs from now). Also, the The rest of the time can indeed be spend pursuing ecological engineering.

Re: the pirates. Depending on a faction we haven't even met yet for vital military research isn't exactly very sound. latest intel says they have met both cycon and the uni, so even if they WOULD give us those two for something, it is very unlikely we would have anything to give back. Mobility and flexbility are not priorities right now, but we will want them within 20 turns or we will be hooped as far as defense goes.

- Rokossovky

Snowflake · July 29, 2003, 22:18

I am so happy to see some real discussions rather than spamming ~~which means I can now sit back and focus on spamming~~.

Comrade Kody, we don't need to fight every once and while any more now that they are fighting, we can agree to each other now.

Kody · July 29, 2003, 22:22

I'm actually rather open on the tech path thing at the moment.
I'm trying to gather information to form an opinion on what should be done. The person who has the most convicing tech strategy gets my vote.

Kody

Rokossovky · July 30, 2003, 00:03

I would build social pysch right now so we have Rec Commons available. We WILL need these to counter drones (ours, not the faction) in the near future. After that, it would be good to have particle impactors available to us. We don't necessarily need to build any, just have them around "in case". With our defensive needs out of the way, it would then be wise to go for Biogenetics so that we can pursue Ecological Engineering as Jamski suggested.

- Rokossovky

Jamski · July 30, 2003, 04:42

Pah! We can't feed our people or build our boreholes with particle impactors. We are IN NO DANGER of an invasion at the current moment, either from the Drones, or from another faction. This game will be a slow cooker, noone will WANT to risk an early war, and if they do, then our free defences make us NOT the number one target for anyone. Sure defence is fine, but right now, its wasted research. We have no enemies, but we do want to get some good bases up and some nice terraforming. This will let us build a superior army in the longer term. We already have 2-armour don't we? (Thanks Drones) so we can put that behind a perimiter defence and we get something that will stop everything up to missilelauncherweapons. No worries there. We'd be stupid to start grabbing millitary techs now. We should get SOMETHING we can offer the Pirates for the "doctrine Techs", as we WILL meet them sooner rather than later. And even then they pose no danger yet. If people ARE worried about defence, then we should build some probe teams. Its more likely we get probed than attacked at this stage of the game.

-Jam

Kody · July 30, 2003, 05:07

I'd tend to agree, with Jamski. However, I don't think the pirates will be so quick to trade flexibility.

Kody

Snowflake · July 30, 2003, 10:33

I agree we don't need to worry for defenses. We would only need the military techs if we are planning an early offensive war. Do WE want war? I ask this question since we are the Hives.

"Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution. "
--- Chairman Mao

Jamski · July 30, 2003, 16:47

The question is :

Is the Hive a millitary faction? Are we secretly the Spartans?

-Jam

Rokossovky · July 30, 2003, 18:51

Bah. Jamski, I was NEVER proposing to go ape **** wild with the military. All I was proposing is covering our asses for the time being. Researching Impact weapons would NOT affect our faction in the long run other than we wouldn't risk getting our asses handed to us on a nice Uni/Cycon/Pirate/Data Angel/Believer platter (notice the list there, it is impossible to predict exactly what they are thinking, remember that.) I am not even saying we should BUILD impact weapons in the near future, just that we have them so we are not waiting 8-9 turns to research them when the **** hits the fan. I agree that mobility and flexibility can wait, but ignoring impact weapons would be shear stupidity. In my proposed research plan I have made sure to get what we need for our hive first, that being rec commons, THEN we can go for impact, and after that,we wouldn't need flexibility or mobility for 30-40 turns.

- Rokossovky

Rokossovky · July 30, 2003, 18:57

Re: Synthmetal. Getting IB would mean longer to research all of our other techs. It is better to wait getting that until later so we can research quicker right now. I DO agree that what we need is synthmetal garrisons in our cities. Coupled with our rovers, that would indeed provide adequate defenses for now. However, as I have said before, it would be VERY prudent to have the option of building impact units IF something were to happen.

- Rokossovky

Jamski · July 30, 2003, 19:27

BUT... for Impact we need lasers too. That's TWO useless techs to me.

We'd be better off getting 2-armour and sitting tight behind our free defences.

-Jam

Vev · July 30, 2003, 19:55

We already have lasers.

Kody · July 30, 2003, 21:07

Why rec commons, can't we just build more police?

So people think we should skip flexibility?

Kody

Vev · July 30, 2003, 21:15

Perhaps someone can give a pro-con versus rec common and police back by facts and studies. Including issues on tech acquirement, production expenditure, upkeep in both ec and mineral and other stuff that I might have missed.

Kody · July 30, 2003, 21:36

Perhaps someone else can do that.....

Kody

Rokossovky · July 31, 2003, 00:55

As kody pointed out, we already have lasers. Impact is just one quick tech away. And yes, I agree, we shouldn't invest in building impact infantry right now, just have it there in case we need it. At present, yes, synthmetal garissions is what we need to actually produce and use.

Re: Police. In my experience depending on more than 1 unit a base for police is.... dangerous. If you need to quickly rush defences to another city, you end up having to severly scale back production in the other cities where you are taking your defenders from. Also, in terms of an offensive conflict, you either encur larger support costs or put up with a smaller offensive contingent because your entire army is tied down as police, rather than being free to move. In terms of regular life, having rec commons is always good. Even if we do max out police, having a rec common would allow us to maximize our production, or have doctors or whatever our fetish is at the time. Also, from the attitude on this forum, we don't seem so keen on building military units, so we'd just end up with a bunch of drone ridden cities. Definately not good.

- Rokossovky

Rokossovky · July 31, 2003, 00:56

I apologize for the lack of facts and studies. lol, I am just going from my in-game experience.

- Rokossovky

Kody · July 31, 2003, 01:20

Well I figured we could build police, and upgrade them to non-lethal methods. I don't think military is a high priority this game. The drones are further behind than us on military units guarding their cities.

I figured we go for biogenetics. Let the drones do their proposed social pysch and ethical calculus. Then go for lifting all the restrictions.

I'm hoping to nab one of the anti-drone SP after doing the WP. If not we can ask the drones to give us social psych when we need. I'll look at organising the tech sharing.

Kody

Vev · July 31, 2003, 01:25

Well at some point warfare will begin once the factions have formed teams. Anyway that is further into the future. Another option is to try specialist cities?

Rokossovky · July 31, 2003, 01:36

Quote:

Well I figured we could build police, and upgrade them to non-lethal methods

That is what I usually do, but once again i try to keep my dependance on police down to one unit for the reasons I stated above.

- Rokossovky

Snowflake · July 31, 2003, 10:22

Here's my 2 cents (1 cent less than dear deputy of course). We'll need rec commons eventually, but not now. We have other things in the building list that is of a higher priority. We should do the doctor in the very near term, then build a police where is needed when the base finished its crawlers. We'll be ok for a while if we could get VW or HGP after WP. At that time we probably could have got impact, and can upgrade the scouts so that we will have a offensive force already formed if needed. After the restrictions lifting, we'll probably be pop booming, this is the time we would need the rec commons (or holo theater if we have VW).

Rokossovky · July 31, 2003, 16:35

Um, yea, that makes sense HongHu. I guess I really shouldn't be complaining if you guys actually want to build more units...

. However, I do follow a different path, and I have found it fairly safe and rewarding at the same time. Whenever I play my bases always follow a definate pattern (other than an SP base and a unit production base, usually first and second built cities) which goes defensive unit, former, 2 colony pods, then rec commons, network node, children's creche, and finally hologram theater. In my experience that has served me well and kept drones in check until pop 7, in which case I build a second defender (by this time it is usually needed militarily as well...) and a hab complex.

- Rokossovky

Jamski · July 31, 2003, 17:22

I'm in favour of building TWO police units for each base only, to be upgraded in the future from 1-1-1 units to 1-2-1(police) and then 1-3-1(police, AAA) These two units will be doubled to an effective 4 police with non-leathal methods, which is the "police state" maximum IIRC. We need to add a rec-commons as well, just to keep people happy up to the hab-complex size, at least in the bases where we want production from the base radius, not in bases that will be crawling all thier supplies in.

However, we don't NEED impact weapons for defence, we just have to rename our defensive 1-2-1(police) infantry as "impact infantry" and that will work

-Jam
-Jam