08-01-2005 21:07									#31
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quote: Originally posted by Zeiter I guess what we need to consider is how easily we would be able to mop up the Morganites with our second invasion proper after the raid, and how much of a boon that would be for us. With the PTS (and HGP, possibly) obliterated, the Morganites will be faced with massive drone problems, forcing them to: 1. Switch workers to doctors 2. Spend their time building drone facilities 3. Possibly starve some of their citizens in the process of switching workers to doctors (especially if we can manage to take out the HGP too.) Thus, they will easily lose at least 5 turns of turn advantage, and they will still be in a much weakened state afterwards. I have no doubt that a second invasion proper would prevail.

Yep it sounds great
Let's hope it all goes according to plan.

quote: Now, what would we gain from the second invasion? True, we wouldn't get the PTS or the HGP. However, we would obtain some nice cities (although they might resort to a scorched-earth policy, in which case we could only be sure of capturing any cities on the first turn of invasion), and some fertile real-estate. In short, we'd be the masters of the northern hemisphere.

I think most important of all: We will have eliminated the yellow menace from the game. The faction that looked so ominously winning only 10 turns ago. Now they're in serious jeopardy.

quote: I think we should also begin thinking about plans regarding an assault on Yangland.

Interesting numbers, sounds almost affordable But is Yang really the best target after the Morgans? Why not go after the other humans immediately? The game could won easier that way. We could take a stab at the Gaians. Our elite troops would be well suited to take on the mindworms.

	08-01-2005 21:47									#32
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quote: But is Yang really the best target after the Morgans? Why not go after the other humans immediately? The game could won easier that way. We could take a stab at the Gaians. Our elite troops would be well suited to take on the mindworms.

Interesting thinking. I still don't think I've gotten into the mindset that we can transport troops 8 tiles/turn. The Gaian continent seems like it's far away, but I guess it's not really. How long of a voyage would it be, 4 or 5 turns, maybe? About as long as the voyage to Morgania, oddly enough. Their powergraph seems to indicate that they are rather weak. Yang's still battling them quite fiercely, is he not? Now that I consider it, I think the Gaians would easily crumble under such a two-front attack, although it would make me feel more comfortable with such a plan if we could manage to infiltrate them first.

On the other hand, can we agree that, if Yang manages to build the HSA, then the Yang invasion receives priority? That would also seal up the game, I would think. In one fell swoop you remove one of the largest obstacles to any invasion.

	08-01-2005 22:11									#33
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One target at a time, alright? Now is Morgan time.

	09-01-2005 12:12									#34
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quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen My thinking is that we send our raid troops to Morgania, and see if we can still succeed in the raid, and if so do it. If not, send the boys home to Arcadia and wait for the build-up and invasion proper.

My thoughts exactly.

Right up until the time that the Castor Horsemen roll off Mercury to take out the defenders at Morgan Mussels we'll know how strong they are and how likely a PTS raid (with an HGP add-on) will be to succeed.

If the odds turn against us we can always just return to Climatic Research and await a grander military build-up

	10-01-2005 02:19									#35
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quote: Originally posted by Zeiter Now, what would we gain from the second invasion? True, we wouldn't get the PTS or the HGP. However, we would obtain some nice cities

Not at all I fear. I did some further "research":

Morgan currently has 18 bases.
Two of those would be destroyed because of the PTS Raid, reducing the total to 16.
Destroying the PTS would give an extra drone to all Morganite bases.
That would probably cause drone riots in about three quarters of their bases, certainly all their size 3 bases.
Workers would have to be switched to doctors.
That would cause nutrient shortages in many bases.
Since the nutrient tanks of many bases, especially the most recently founded, are nearly empty, this could cause mass starvation.
To be more precise in some six bases I estimate.
Problem is in most cases two population is lost when taking over control of a base: one by destroying the last defender, and one by the action of capturing the base. (Though a pop doesn't seem to be lost if the defender is a probe unit - should confirm it, then we could get some more bases)
This means a base needs to be size 3 in order to survive and be size 1 after the conquest.
Taking all the above into account, we'd probably only be able to capture some four size 1 bases: Morgan Vulcanology, Red Fungus Resort, City of ZTT, Impaler Polymers (but apparently some would like to obliterate that one as well).
So come to think of it, there probably wouldn't be that much of a difference in what we'd gain between a Morganite war of conquest, or a war of destruction.

quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen If their economy is twice our size, could we mount raids to eliminate half of it, enabling us to compete? And wouldn't the other teams have a good chance to play catch-up?

That's indeed a fear of me. The Angels now have Ethical Calculus and perhaps the Gaians now too. So who knows they'll start popbooming while we're eliminating the Morganites, having us face a new superpower just after we've finished with the old one.

However as Googlie says, the Morganites would be severely weakened if the PTS Raid succeeds, and I now think the costs of building a military force sufficient to take out the Morganites wouldn't have to be that high.

	10-01-2005 04:12									#36
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Good lord, I hadn't even considered the fact that the PTS raid would starve them to the point of extinction. It would certainly be a genocide of massive proportions, one we'd better get done with ASAP before our little shreds of goodwill turn into cries bloody murder from the other two humans.

	10-01-2005 12:04									#37
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Hmm - the presence of their armored crawler suggests that we may have to limit our expectations just to the PTS and the destruction of their HQ

We'll waste movement points killing off that crawler, and likely will just have enough oomph to get to MI, kill the probe defenders and occupy the base (selling the NN), then obliterating it.

And lets hope that their about-to-be commissioned Laser Foil at Morgan Mussels doesn't meet our trannie and escort en route and ruin the surprise

	10-01-2005 12:27									#38
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quote: Originally posted by Googlie Hmm - the presence of their armored crawler suggests that we may have to limit our expectations just to the PTS and the destruction of their HQ We'll waste movement points killing off that crawler, and likely will just have enough oomph to get to MI, kill the probe defenders and occupy the base (selling the NN), then obliterating it.

That is just assuming that they don't build more defenses. (and - granted - that they don't move their crawler).

quote: And lets hope that their about-to-be commissioned Laser Foil at Morgan Mussels doesn't meet our trannie and escort en route and ruin the surprise

Nasty thought: The square right next to Mussels is Morgan territorial waters right? They could park their foil there, preventing us from reaching the shore, forcing us to take a detour, and no drone issues. That would effectively halt the attack. We would need an impact cruiser to tag along in order to thwart this defense, since the defense bonus for hanging around in fungus is pretty big - right?

	10-01-2005 12:32									#39
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quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen We would need an impact cruiser to tag along in order to thwart this defense, since the defense bonus for hanging around in fungus is pretty big - right?

If we catch the Morganite foil in fungus, we can use long-range fire. Weapon-against-weapon, ignoring fungal defence.

	10-01-2005 20:13									#40
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Or probe steal it if we had a probe on board. If we limited our objective to just the PTS at MI, then 3 Impact Rovers plus a probe might do the trick

	11-01-2005 04:53									#41
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A little brainstorming.

First off, I'm going to try to drag the Morganite negotiations a bit by pilfering the Gaians' excuse (?) from them.

Secondly, this lead me to consider the reverse: maybe the Gaians are also trying to delay the negotiations between us as a ruse to avoid them from agreeing to anything to keep us unprepared in an attempt to lull us into a false sense of security, so that they can join the Morganites in an alliance against us. (The Angels would probably follow suit shortly thereafter.) And that would possibly be the end of that, as they say.

While the Gaians and the Morganites allying seems remote at best, and I am going to hint at Illuminatus when I reply to him how way more dangerous a victorious Morgan would be to their Angel/Gaian axis over a victorious but exhausted Sparta, it would make the Morganite bid for war somewhat more feasible. They attempt to make us overconfident so that we'll throw our might at them to destroy them, all the while we are backstabbed by the other two. And now the Morganites are desperately using the foil to contact one of the other two to bring the other human factions into alignment with them to make the plan work - but they had to commit to a vendetta with us in order to get the foil in the first place. The plan is workable, although risky, but not something I'd but beyond a conniving group of human players such as ourselves.

Am I "painting devils on the walls" as the phrase here goes, or is this a real threat?

	11-01-2005 06:25									#42
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Well, of all the factions the Gaians seem to be role-playing the most "honestly" - and as such shouldn't be allying themselves with anyone running free market, such as Morgan

Of course, that's not to say that they wouldn't just ignore that for the right price!!

	12-01-2005 05:06									#43
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hello everyone

being fairly new to SMAX, i've been mostly reading and catching up/learning

just a question however:

what stops morgan from diverting energy to psych to get drones controlled? (how much costs to control drone?)

	12-01-2005 13:00									#44
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quote: Originally posted by sentry33 hello everyone being fairly new to SMAX, i've been mostly reading and catching up/learning just a question however: what stops morgan from diverting energy to psych to get drones controlled? (how much costs to control drone?)

Welcome to the team Sentry33!

My spontaneous response would be that drone controlling these bases with luxuries would be very expensive. I did some research and luckily there is a thread about this here:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/show...threadid=127762

It appears that things are very complicated, and that psych is a rather inefficient way of reducing drones. With only 3 workers in every base, let's say that they generate a total of 8 energy, to quell a drone you need (ignoring all the stuff about hard and soft drong control) 2 energy, which means they'd need to set psych to 30%, not withstanding inefficiency.

Even with this extremely optimistic calculation, they have just lost 30% of their economy to psych, and that alone makes the raid profitable imo.

I await the butchering of my analysis by competent SMAXers

	12-01-2005 18:51									#45
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well i am far from compentent but these are correct numbers i believe...ok going back to lurking now...

	13-01-2005 12:08									#46
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By the way, a raid seems like such a bad wording to me. I think a more appropriate term is a pro-active defensive operation.

	13-01-2005 12:24									#47
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And on the mechanics of it ....

I suggest 3 Impqact Rovers, and Kel, with the latter upgraded to amphibious.

Land the 3 rovers in the tile adjacent to MM (northeast of it), then attack MM from the Mercury with Kel. He'll take out the synthspeeder defensive unit, and at the same time the 2 probes (as the base will be destroyed that attack. He then can land and take out the blocking crawler, to free the road to MI for the 3 Rovers. If Kel has any mps left, he then can reboard the Mercury, otherwise one of the 3 rovers will need to come back after mission accomplishment to stack with Kel to avoid probe control

	13-01-2005 12:56									#48
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But Kel doesn't have the MPs for that does he? He'll use one to kill the defenses and then one to capture the base, so he'll be stuck there, forcing a rover to come and play with him. I can't see the difference in using Kel to do amphibious assault -> capture or a rover to land -> attack -> capture except that it would cost us money to upgrade Kel.

Another option would be to put nerve gas pods on him and destroy the base with one attack, leaving the three rovers free to do as they wish. But of course we don't have neural grafting so he can't be both X:ed and amphibious.

One thing we might consider is the option to suicide the unit which has captured MM, just disband it, thereby allowing the other three rovers to roam freely. Losing a rover is not as bad as losing the PTS

	13-01-2005 19:06									#49
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No - you're right. (I thought in the sim attack that the road network around MM was destroyed when the base fell, but that's not the case. 3 Elite Rovers would do the trick with a limited PTS only objective, 4 if we wanted to take out the HGP s well (based on current defenders)

Using 4, the first rover lands, takes out the defender, which empties the base, then takes out the crawler between MM and MI. The other 3 land and proceed to MI, and one takes out the probe defenders there. If then empty, all enter and 1 goes on to Polymers, takes out the probe defenders, and then entering if empty.

Now with the PTS in our control, we plant any bases we can (if we have colony pods in position) then obliterate Polymers first ('cos otherwise the road network around MI is destroyed if we do that one first, stranding the Polymer rover in the interior) and that attacker retreats to MM, where we have 2 rovers sitting, One returns to stack with the MM rover sitting just outside Mussels (unless that can retreat to the Mercury - I doubt it) then the remaining rover then destroys MI. They retreat towards the coast as far as the slowest one's mp's allow, always remaining stacked.

If the 2 outside the empty Mussels have enough mps to both enter MM, they do, thus destroying the base (1 pop), but it's important that the one with fewest pm's enter first as the roads will be destriyed and the other will need at least 2/3drs of a mp to enter a flat, now roadless, tile to stack with the other.

Maximum mayhem for minimum cost!!

	15-01-2005 00:10									#50
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ok can some one quickly help me? we are at war with lal, uni and morgan? and what is the long term goal after finishing current missions?

	15-01-2005 07:14									#51
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quote: Originally posted by DeathByTheSword ok can some one quickly help me? we are at war with lal, uni and morgan?

We were at war with the University, but now he has surrendered and signed a pact of submission.

Therefore this thread was to discuss who to go after after Zak.

Many were in favour of going after Morgan when we were ready.

But Morgan was ahead of us and declared war by mindcontrolling a ship from us.

And this year the Hive also declared war on us after refusing to give tech.

So the game will hopefully still be interesting for a while.

With Lal we've signed a pact a couple years back.

quote: and what is the long term goal after finishing current missions?

Go after any remaining factions I guess? Though I'm personally beginning to think that if the PTS raid succeeds, we've more or less won the game.

	15-01-2005 13:49									#52
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Maniac sums it up nicely. If you want to get into the mind-set of the Junta, the transcripts of our live-chat when deciding a lot of this policy (right after the Morgan mind control) is available here:

http://www2.onyx.nu/pb/chatter/chatter.php

(and for those who have already seen it, I changed the output of the parser so it looks much prettier now )

If we have more live-chats, we could put a link to that site in the factional datalinks.

	18-01-2005 16:36									#53
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quote: Originally posted by Maniac Also regarding atrocities, my opinion regarding those is more or less, either you don't use them at all, or either you say "To hell with commerce and my reputation" and use them as much as possible to your advantage. So if we'll get sanctions anyway for obliterating Morgan Industries, I'd go full monty and start using nerve stapling (less costs to control our drones), nerve gas (50% stronger troops) and base obliterations (to weaken Morgan more, and faster) as much as we can. I don't know though: could Zak renounce his submission if we'd use normal atrocities too much? Or is only planet busting a big no-no?

Honorable Members of the Junta!
Let your newest colleague present himself and reply about this concern!

Yesterday, I was in single-player in SMAX.
Level: librarian
Player: Sparta
Normal pact with Domai. Myriam submitted to me. Then Yang also submitted.
Domai launched a surprise attack (all others having been eliminated, it was his sole chance to dany me immediate victory).
As I designed all my needlejets as X-needlejets from the start (lasts only one turn more and, hem, more than helpful in case of sunspot activity! ), I immediately gave command of the Spartan Air Force to Chemical Ali!
I didn't even capture any of his bases... After 10 turns, all free drones were free at last: all gazed to death, and I got immediate Conquest Victory.
I made 17 chemical attacks and neither Myriam nor Yang blinked about it.
I don't think Zakharov would either in our ACDG III.
(I don't remember the current relationship with Lal. Some problems are to be expected with that bleeding-heart!)

	18-01-2005 19:40									#54
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quote: Originally posted by vishniac I made 17 chemical attacks and neither Myriam nor Yang blinked about it.

Welcome, Captain vishniac

And that is indeed valuable information that you bring. (I'm not a big user of nervegas - even in progenitor-faction games - so it is good to have experiential data to work with)

G.

	18-01-2005 21:51									#55
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Welcome to the Junta vishniac!

Excellent report! Your research will save the lives of hundreds of Spartan soldiers though I'm not too sure about Morgan civilians.

	19-01-2005 18:57									#56
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quote: Originally posted by vishniac (lasts only one turn more and, hem, more than helpful in case of sunspot activity! )

Heh yes. Even though we couldn't easily get IntInt this way, sunspots could prove very useful for us.

	07-02-2005 09:11									#57
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Hmm - It looks as though we might want to delay our Morgan invasion and PTS raid until the 2161 turn.

Consider:

If we want to found our base in the Nexus during the year when we have the PTS in our control, it'll have to be 2161.

See pic below:

Attachment: nexus site.jpg
This has been downloaded 23 time(s).

	07-02-2005 09:35									#58
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As of right now we're on track for a 2160 landing and roll up to Morgan Industries.

Dare we delay it 1 turn?

Attachment: revised pts raid.jpg
This has been downloaded 23 time(s).

	07-02-2005 11:32									#59
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Damn. Two extra pops or a faster invasion? I'd be partial to the latter, since all turns spend hanging around near the Morganite coast are adding to the risk of a failed landing.

Last edited by Kassiopeia on 07-02-2005 at 17:46

	07-02-2005 12:19									#60
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I'm also in favour of not delaying the attack.

Frankly, I think the raid will be difficult as it is. For sure the Morgans will pump out at least one more ship from Mussels, and we can handle that, but if they manage to build two? It will be tricky even to land our boys... And they will speed up their defensive mobilization as well. So the quicker the better imo.