02-01-2005 19:31									#31
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quote: Originally posted by Googlie Short term "teach thoise so and so's a lesson" plan: Load up the Mercury with 4 Elite Impact Rovers, and send it, shadowed by AU's cruiser. SCC GeneralTacticus, to Morgan soil. Objective: capture and obliterate the bases housing the PTS (Morgan Industries), the HGP (Impaler Polymers) and the PEG (Scorpi Ski Resort) Then reload to the Mercury and return (or not, as the case may be - by then we might have an army of hoplites and Crypteia to hold captured bases)

Yes, this seems the thing to do right now There's no element of surprise any more. The Castor Horsemen (still combat virgins) proudly volounteer for this mission.

It seems to me they have neglected the chance of our going east from Arcadia in an assault, even up to the ship which they probed on our west coast. I guess they expect the Hunter and their second soon-to-be-commissioned laser foil to seriously cripple our plans.

	02-01-2005 19:32									#32
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They(the Gaians and Angels) just have to click on our profile and then look at us from yang's eyes (both have infiltrated yang) to see that we are in vendetta with Morgan now.

Their "CRYPTEIA" dept equivalent would see that next turn - if they are any good (and I have no reason to doubt that they are as good at covert intelligence analysis as we are)

So, no harm done. I wouldn'r even bother the mods on this

	02-01-2005 19:38									#33
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quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen I guess they expect the Hunter and their second soon-to-be-commissioned laser foil to seriously cripple our plans.

We will always have the Mercury accompanied by a GeneralTacticus class cruiser (which has synth armor) which begs the question - we should prolly invest in armoring the trannie as well - it'd cost 60 ec's right now - 120 after we build the second one. Sounds expensive, but not as bad as losing 4 Elite Rovers to a laser foil attack)

	02-01-2005 20:05									#34
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quote: Originally posted by Googlie They(the Gaians and Angels) just have to click on our profile and then look at us from yang's eyes (both have infiltrated yang) to see that we are in vendetta with Morgan now. Their "CRYPTEIA" dept equivalent would see that next turn - if they are any good (and I have no reason to doubt that they are as good at covert intelligence analysis as we are) So, no harm done. I wouldn'r even bother the mods on this

Good to have that cleared , I was pretty sure there was some sneaky way to find out what our diplomatic stance is. We can leave it at that then.

	02-01-2005 21:31									#35
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quote: Originally posted by Googlie Short term "teach thoise so and so's a lesson" plan: Load up the Mercury with 4 Elite Impact Rovers, and send it, shadowed by AU's cruiser. SCC GeneralTacticus, to Morgan soil. Objective: capture and obliterate the bases housing the PTS (Morgan Industries), the HGP (Impaler Polymers) and the PEG (Scorpi Ski Resort) Then reload to the Mercury and return (or not, as the case may be - by then we might have an army of hoplites and Crypteia to hold captured bases)

Could this plan work? Isn't there the risk Morgan will mind control our invasion force the turn after we landed it?

	02-01-2005 21:53									#36
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quote: Originally posted by Maniac Could this plan work? Isn't there the risk Morgan will mind control our invasion force the turn after we landed it?

Not if we always have the rovers working in pairs. it'd need a fine eye for detail - seeing what mp's were left for each, but right now we could sail into Morgan Mussels Bay and with its 1 pop, our first wave would take out the probe teams there and destroy the base (2 rovers) Next wave, 1 rover takes out that crawler blocking access, while the second then moves up to Industries and takes out the probe defender there, and enters base. We sell the Network Node then obliterate the base and with it the PTS. Crawler-destroying rover, still with movement points left, joins base-destroying rover for double coverage

Next turn we fan out - first pair moving thru the Industries site to Impaler Polymers (site of the HGP) and this way we'll have a 4-rover attack force (as Morgan will obviously have tried to redeploy defenses somewhat) but should be able to take out that base and its SP that second turn (he does have a sensor that covers that base, though)

If they can all make it, there's a monolith in Imp's base radius that they can heal at while fresh plans are drawn up (but it's not road linked, so we'd need to be careful we didn't leave a rover unable to join the rest)

	02-01-2005 21:58									#37
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Sounds good.

One worry: Morgan has laser weapons. Since they have a high productio, could they not immediately build laser units to destroy us, before we can achieve our targets?

	02-01-2005 22:01									#38
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quote: Originally posted by Googlie Not if we always have the rovers working in pairs.

Yes, this idea sounds nice But remember, obliterating bases is terrible pr. Atrocity is a dirty game, I've had submissives declare war with me when I used Planet Busters. Of course this isn't as bad as that, but it might cause Yang to declare war on us, and it could cause Lal to break his alliance.

Has there been any more detailed research in this area?

Another problem with working in pairs is that the Morgans could quickly mobilize a laser rover to knock out one of the boys, and leave the other vulnerable. I dare say that losing an impact unit to a Morgan probe would be really bad right now, though not as bad as their losing the PTS or the HGP

	02-01-2005 22:10									#39
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well - we could pair an Impact Rover with a Skanky Sileni. The latter can take out crawlers easily enough and can also be the unit that enters an empty base. Its syntharmor and morale should survive a laser attack

Ideally, thouigh, would be 3-unit teams - an Impact Rover, a Skanky and a Longstrider

	02-01-2005 22:13									#40
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Either that or we just do a quick in-and-out. Take out the PTS at Morgan Industries and then withdraw. Morgan's whole strategy has been built around their having that SP

	02-01-2005 22:20									#41
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quote: Originally posted by Googlie well - we could pair an Impact Rover with a Skanky Sileni. The latter can take out crawlers easily enough and can also be the unit that enters an empty base. Its syntharmor and morale should survive a laser attack Ideally, thouigh, would be 3-unit teams - an Impact Rover, a Skanky and a Longstrider

Sounds perfect to me. But of course, this requires more time to organize and build units.

	02-01-2005 22:21									#42
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Uh, and I was away from this.

Seems like Morgan has quite a party going, eh? It must be a truly cunning plan, for it looks like suicide to me. My first thoughts are, they underestimated our ability to wage war. OR, they really have something nasty waitin (or coming!) for us. The second one doesn't seem likely, especially if one looks at their unit inventory. Some really weird Morgan behaviour. Or did we make them that scared?

Anyway, if we can make a lasting impression now, I think we should. But, I'd keep low if other human factions aren't on our side. Remember, we don't want to get into a 3-front war, even if the enemies couldn't hurt us very much.

EDIT: And I wasn't on board of any of those ships. I'm using the MCC to control them, while being the governor of Arcadia - staying on land.

Last edited by Modo44 on 02-01-2005 at 22:38

	02-01-2005 22:29									#43
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Looking at it from the other's perspectves:

Do the Gaians want a 2-front war? I doubt it. They have their hands full with yang, and wouldn't relish our appearing on their doorstep with our Elite Impact Rovers

Do the Angels want war at all? I doubt it. They have obviously had their chance to get techs from yang but have avoided it (or at least if they have gone beyond mere infiltration then Yang has chosen not to declare vendetta on them - very uncharacteristic Yang behaviour, if so) The Angels' strength lies in infiltration, not warmaking

So I'm betting that we can ignore them. Or, as suggested elsewhere, sweeten their attitude by getting a few credits and maybe a future tech in exchange for their 10 years' neutrality and Ecological Engineering

	03-01-2005 14:24									#44
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We had a big chat last night. Me, Googlie, Kassiopeia and Maniac were there, talking about this war mostly. When I left, the plan was still to conduct a fast raid on Morgania with 4 rovers from Arcadia. The target is to first take Morgan Mussels and then Morgan Industries which hosts the PTS. MM will be lost on capture since it is too small, and since we are unable to protect MI from probe captures, that will be obliterated ... The attack will take one turn, and the Mercury will arrive at Morgan Mussels 4 turns from now, if all goes according to plan. Our troops may survive, and will probably not be captured. The Morgans will suffer greatly from the destruction of the PTS.

After the PTS raid, we will perform a larger build-up and send 8 rovers, 8 skirmishers and 8 probe teams to capture the whole thing.

This is all still open for debate of course

The transcript should be published soon, Googlie is going to mail it to me, and I'll post it on my server.

	03-01-2005 15:03									#45
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The attack won't be without its downsides either. Our prestige and integrity will get a slight dent, we will face ten years of commercial sanctions due to the atrocity nature of base obliteration (120 credits IIRC), and the atrocity might be enough to make Zak decide to disavow his submission to us. Granted, we are looking greedily at MonStat and might want to take that sooner or later anyway, so reducing to Treaty status might not be as large a hit as you'd think.

	03-01-2005 15:40									#46
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War is expensive.... But it's what we do best.

Remember that the other factions will also lose some trade income from us, so it's not entirely unilateral.

An important thing to do is also to convince the G&A that this is a desperate counter-attack and not phase one in an invasion. We are trying to play weak, so that they will not jump in the war with the Morgans. Another way we intend to do this is to write about a fictional Morgan invasion of our territory in a special Phalanx issue.

	03-01-2005 16:29									#47
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quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen An important thing to do is also to convince the G&A that this is a desperate counter-attack and not phase one in an invasion. We are trying to play weak, so that they will not jump in the war with the Morgans. Another way we intend to do this is to write about a fictional Morgan invasion of our territory in a special Phalanx issue.

Good idea. Our initial attack will halt fairly soon, so the desperation will be sooo obvious. I don't think we should write about a fictional attack. Just describing the fact from our oh-so-weak perspective should do the trick. It's almost as if Morgan planned to help us with this.

	03-01-2005 16:36									#48
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Just a thought here, isn't it ridiculously expensive to mind control bases with SP's in them? Assuming it is, and the Morgans can't afford it at the time we invade (Like Kass said, having a huge amount of cash in their reserves is probably not part of their war plans). If we capture MI, can we rush-build a colony pod, disbanding the base, not suffering the atrocity crime? We could even disband a rover to make hurrying the cp cheaper.

They'll have time to probe-steal a few techs perhaps ...

	03-01-2005 16:42									#49
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quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen They'll have time to probe-steal a few techs perhaps ...

Which is why we can't keep bases, unless Crypteia are going along. We still have very valuable technology, and it would be foolish to lose it, just because of relatively few energy credits.

	03-01-2005 17:00									#50
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Even more importantly, we mustn't get infiltrated. Apart from our military machine, it's our greatest asset against them, or any human faction for that matter. We're flying with our eyes open, they are blind.

	03-01-2005 17:27									#51
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You guys are right of course, infiltration would be a disaster, as would losing techs like HEC or SFF.

I was just thinking about this whole ordeal, what a way to behave ... First we kill one of their probe teams and infiltrate them, rather minor incident. They in return mind control one of our laser foils, a rather minor incident. As payback for that, we obliterate their capital, along with the Planetary Transit System, as well as completely destroying another one of their bases. I would say that is a major incident And I seriously doubt they are prepared for it.

quote:

	03-01-2005 22:14									#52
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It is a huge rate of escalation. I wonder what would be the appropriate response from the Morganites? A swarm of PBs that leave Sparta mainland a desolate wasteland?

	03-01-2005 22:35									#53
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quote: Originally posted by Kassiopeia It is a huge rate of escalation. I wonder what would be the appropriate response from the Morganites? A swarm of PBs that leave Sparta mainland a desolate wasteland?

Sure. Only thing is, there will be no Morgan to use PBs.

	03-01-2005 22:58									#54
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S:

Can't get the e-mail addy to work, so have hung the raw logs here

G.

Attachment: raw chatlogs.zip
This has been downloaded 5 time(s).

	03-01-2005 23:36									#55
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It's absolutely pissing down rain here in the southern California desert, so I'll set up the simulator so that we can all play at invading Morgan and obliterating the PTS

	03-01-2005 23:57									#56
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Well I made a little script to parse the dang logs, took me much longer than it should have. I even felt compelled to ad an automatic listing of existing logs, which I ripped from another thing I made so it looks awful But here you go:

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

It won't automatically upload anything you convert, though I can add that later, currently it just converts the raw chat log to some primitive html.

	04-01-2005 00:40									#57
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Here it is - open it as a "load Game" and just head 3 tiles east with the Mercury and then you're in Mussels Bay and ready to unload

(Defenders in place are as at 2154 - of course there may be more resitance in 2158)

Attachment: pts raid simulator.zip
This has been downloaded 2 time(s).

	04-01-2005 00:45									#58
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Good work, Snoddasmannen

(re the sim raid - the crawler I referred to in the chat is actually by another base - it seems to be clear sailing (driving) for MI after we shut down Morgan Mussels.

And we have lots of mps left with a couple of rovers - we could do serious damage at the rgi base as well before exiting - or 2 rovers could reboard the Mercury that same turn, out of harms way

Just experiment and see the art of the possible

	04-01-2005 01:08									#59
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Great work Googlie! Wish I had SMAX so I could play with it ...

I'm glad we have some extra MP's, we might need them to destroy the beefed up defenses.

Is it possible to extend the raid to an additional turn? It will be impossible for them to fortify all the cities adjacent to our forces.

	04-01-2005 01:35									#60
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Kass, how are you doing with the diplomacy efforts in this war, have you had time to send out any offical statements to the other factions?