The Fifth Race Quest

[SamPardi]

Steel and tritium upgrades are mutually exclusive, yes. So you just benefit from the best one available to your Hive Cluster.

 

[Winged One]

Most emphatically disagree.

Click to shrink...

Well, with a disagreement that major between us, of course you're not going to like my plan!

Steel and tritium upgrades are mutually exclusive, yes. So you just benefit from the best one available to your Hive Cluster.

Click to shrink...

'kay. I guess uniting the trinium hive cluster with the Stargate hive cluster is going to be on the agenda, but it'll probably take a while even if we build an eastern bridge. And, of course, steel zerg will probably see more use on trinium-poor worlds.

Will the Agile Quadruped biomorph be able to benefit from Attack Claws?

The latest update isn't threadmarked.

 

[SamPardi]

Dromeosaur
If its machine guns in place of claws, I really doubt it. But who knows. We'll have a much better idea how guns and all that will fit in when they are actually a thing.

Winged One
It does yes.

Fixed.

 

[Zelgan]

Hmm, I wonder if we will be able to find the Zerg Corruptor's anti-gravity cancer or an equivalent on this world, it would be insanely useful.

 

[Daeth]

So why are you guys not building the Forge? Thats is the best way forward to equip our Militia with something better than pointy sticks. We really need it.

 

[Winged One]

So why are you guys not building the Forge? Thats is the best way forward to equip our Militia with something better than pointy sticks. We really need it.

Click to shrink...

I chose the loom over the forge for survivability - it gives our human troops armor (since we have access to trinium), while the forge gives weapons.

 

[Xilph]

So a rough guide to culture bonuses by value in my opinion.

• Hunger 4: Unbelievably stupid good, a brief nerf while we spend it but if we dump everything into Tenements we would get a stupid huge buff to Creep Growth. It swaps the limiting factor from actions to drones, and we have a lot more drones than actions. Depending on when it's used it could easily provide six times the creep growth going forwards, just from our current figures, in the future? We could possibly get dozens of times the creep growth from just the one action.
• Concord 3: Creep RP obviously dwarfs everything else by a huge margin, so Concord 3 should give us a massive boost to trade goods.
• Concord 1: Early on it's pretty good, makes sure we get contact with a trustworthy benevolent civ which is great.
• The rest kind of go from good to kinda meh, particularly Harmony 4 seems really meh worthy, we get unemployed pop/4 in RP that turn which without some really massive human population should be dwarfed by Creep. For example currently we'd get around a quarter of normal creep RP gain by using, so presumably there is some way to get truly massive human pop gains later or it's going to stay fairly shoddy.

That said, my variant of the plans.

[X] Morph: Queen (-1 larva, -5 RP)
[X] Morph: Drone x11 (-11 larvae, -3.66 RP)

Unremarkable, more units = better really.

[X] Drone (dedicated): Harvest Iron x7 (+5.6 RP)

We have 17 drones not counting the 11 from this phase so the full 11 are thrown at gathering as the other 11 are available later on afaik.

[X] Work Crews: Make Iron Mining Camp (-1 RP)
[X] Work Crew: Gathering (+0.9 RP)

3 crews = Iron Camp + 1 spare for gathering

[X] Dancer: Tell more stories
[X] Dancer: celebrate the lack of monster attacks lately (suggested effect: increased morale)

Dancers are useful.

[X] Queen: Micromanage
[X] Queen: Micromanage (Dedicated)

Actions are good, we have two queens, so two actions.

Gains: -4.16 RP, +2 actions, -12 larvae
New total: 26.11, 5 actions, 21 drones, 30 EP, 20 VP

[X] Scout: Sarcosuchus
[X] Scout: Gather herbs for study
[X] Scout: Stalk Great Cat
[X] Scout: explore east, around the tritium
[X] Scout: explore south, beyond the Stargate
[X] Drone: explore south, beyond the Stargate x5

5 scouts were available, the first three went to the special scouting actions. One scout scouting around the trinium, one scout going south to try and exploit the advantages of humans, and than five drones scouting south to try and pick up anything possibly interesting just to the south of us.

[X] Action: Appreciate Local Jungle
[X] Action: Build Hatchery near Trinium Vein (-10 RP, -1 drone, 5 drones assigned as seed workers)
[X] Action: Build Hatchery near Lead Vein (-10 RP, -1 drone, 4 drones assigned as seed workers)
[X] Action: Build Zerg Loom (-2 RP, -1 drone)
[X] Action: Build Zerg Forge (-3 RP, -1 drone)

Why go for just one option? Loom, Forge, 2 Hatchery, and the Jungle. Covers pretty much everything we might want, the sixth action goes to the great cat by the way.

[X] Attack the Great Cat to the East. 1 unit of Soldiers, Artur and You will be risked in the attack (You personally can only driven off at this point not killed), in that order. (Costs 1 Action.)
- [X] Send 3 drones to help with the attack.
[X] Raise them. - Risky, they are wild animals after all.
-[X] Conditional on consumption of the adult Great Cat showing they have potential for new evolutions, if nothing is offered we can't obtain elsewhere than don't raise. Raising should be focused on maintaining a population, not training as Zerg based off them would be much better than they are.

We want it for evolutions, if we want pets later we can have the Zerg reconstruct domesticated great cats using the power of genetics. We could code in docility too making it much safer, so breeding center to keep a supply up until we've got everything we can from them, then harvest the remainder for modified versions. We already have the unit of soldiers too so can just use that one.

[X] Complete Evolution: Attack Claws (-15 EP)
[X] Evolution: Agile Quadruped Bio-morph (0/40)

More agility should give should cut down distance penalties and the ability to scout further and more effectively with Zerg.

Final RP: 1.11 RP

I don't think I made any mistakes in there? The plans are kinda complex though.

 

[Dromeosaur]

If its machine guns in place of claws, I really doubt it. But who knows. We'll have a much better idea how guns and all that will fit in when they are actually a thing.

Click to shrink...

I actually thought about something like a drednought from ME: zergling, that grows, using the machine gun as a spine. Of course, it will be a bit stiff even comparing it to normal animals, but the sheer firepower should compensate for it nicely. It is even possible to leave the claws in the case of emergencies, as a machine gun incorporation should not be that complicated. Of course, there is a cooling issue, but it's possible to use water.

Granted, we need to produce mashine guns first, but with an ancient as an advisor and bullshit zerg techbase we can probably create a biobuilding that grows some kind of biological guns and missiles and armor. Why guns? They are much easier to design or produce that a hydrolysk - for them we will have to find some really weird critters. Or mantis shrimps.

More than that, firearms are very effective against common threats in SG universe, and as Zerg, we can grow such low - tech weapon in ridiculous amounts. Modified zerglings should not be more than 1.5 times as expensive as usuall ones - and they are ten times more deadly. Imagine a forest full of catlike zerg that can snipe you with a 7.62X51 mm bullet from a tree-top a kilometer away. And there are thousands of them.

Another nightmare for our enemies may be a bird-grenade. They should be extremely cheap to produce, but devastatingly effective against nearly anything. We don't even need any fancy acid; just a bit of grown steel spikes and some explosives.

We can design things to produce something simple like a gun from ground - up, can't we? Actually, can we start mass - growing knifes from our buildings? It should be really simple! Like ten minutes work, if we forget about testing and optimisation, simple. And bows! Can we grow bows? Or some other kind of a living crossbow? Or living armor? Of course, living armor is very complicated, but it should be possible.

Can we create something like a mix between a horse and a drone? It can significantly speed up the work.

edit: or we can produce an unholy mixture between a crocodile and a crossbow! And we will suddenly have a quite effective turrets, that can survive years without much food.

 

[Daeth]

Firearms are simple from a mechanical point of view, less so from a biological point of view. Many critters out their are capable of squirting a liquid, Hydrolisks are simple an evolution of that, increasing the pressure of the liquid being squirted, then put a solid projectile in-front of it. In terms of ranged attacks I think the first we would look at is something like a roaches acid spit. Further down the line when we can get Naquadah super-conductors, and an understanding of electro-magnetism we could get biological coil/rail guns.

I'm guessing that we can't have both steel and tritium upgrades in the same zerg without evolving an alloy equivalent separately?

[X] Attack the Great Cat to the East. 1 unit of Soldiers, Artur and You will be risked in the attack (You personally can only driven off at this point not killed), in that order. (Costs 1 Action.)
-[X] Bring as many drones as possible for swarm tactics. Spend 1 culture point to increase chances of success and survival if possible.
[X] Raise them. - Risky, they are wild animals after all.
-[X] You thought about just killing them, but if some of the human members of your Swarm want pets, you won't deny them. You might even find a way to connect them to the hive mind.

[X] Morph: Queen (-1 larva, -5 RP)
[X] Morph: Drone x11 (-11 larvae, -3.66 RP)
[X] Work Crew: disband (+100 civilians)
[X] Hire: Soldiers (-100 civilians, -2 RP, Artur must survive)

[X] Work Crews: Make Iron Mining Camp (-1 RP)
[X] Drone (dedicated): Harvest Iron x7 (+7 RP)
[X] Drone: Gather Trees x11 (+5.5 RP)
[X] Dancer (dedicated): Tell more stories (suggested effect: +1 CP)
[X] Dancer: celebrate the lack of monster attacks lately (suggested effect: increased morale)
[X] Gather (dedicated): Trade Goods (1 drone, 1 scout)
[X] Queen: Micromanage (+1 action)
[X] Culture: spend 1 CP for +10 success action if it affects the mother cat fight.


Gains: +.84 RP, +1 CP, +1 action, +1 bundle of herbs, +2 lumber, -12 larvae
New total: 31.11, 1(or 2) CP, 4 actions, 1 bundle of herbs, 2 lumber, 0 larvae, 0 unemployed civilians, 30 EP, 20 VP

[X] Scout(dedicated until finished): gather herbs for study
[X] Scout: explore east, around the tritium
[X] Drone: explore south, beyond the Stargate
[X] Scout: explore south, beyond the Stargate

[X] Action: Appreciate Local Jungle (+10 EP, -1 action)
[X] Action: Scout new Talent. (-1 action)
[X] Action: Build Hatchery near Trinium Vein (-10 RP, -1 drone, 6 drones assigned as seed workers)
[X] Action: Build Zerg Loom (-2 RP, -1 drone)

[X] Complete Evolution: Attack Claws (-15 EP)
[X] Evolution: Agile Quadruped Bio-morph (0/40)

Click to shrink...

Would you consider replacing []Scout new Talent with []Build Zerg Forge ?
If you did that would be a perfect plan from my point of view.

 

[Winged One]

I don't see what's wrong with Hydralisks except that they'll take a while. Guns would take time to invent too, though.

Would you consider replacing []Scout new Talent with []Build Zerg Forge ?
If you did that would be a perfect plan from my point of view.

Click to shrink...

Hm... I don't think I'll do it. We're evolving attack claws this turn, so our soldiers' being armed with good steel weapons is less of a priority than it might otherwise be. And my plan uses that culture point, so we might as well roll the dice on talent while we have a bonus.

 

[Xilph]

They can't, 3 base actions + 1 from Queen gives 4 actions but Winged One has their plan already using five actions. I suggest consulting mine if you want Loom + Forge + Hatchery + Attack Cat, it's similar except with a much greater focus on scouting. Also, why is firing a work crew to form soldiers but then not giving the soldiers an action used?

 

[Daeth]

3 Base actions + 1 Action from last turn's queen (which is why the update said 4 actions were available) + 1 Action from extra queen hatched this turn and assigned to micro-manage.

Also Winged One good point.

The rest kind of go from good to kinda meh, particularly Harmony 4 seems really meh worthy, we get unemployed pop/4 in RP that turn which without some really massive human population should be dwarfed by Creep. For example currently we'd get around a quarter of normal creep RP gain by using, so presumably there is some way to get truly massive human pop gains later or it's going to stay fairly shoddy.

Click to shrink...

I don't know, Harmony 3 seems pretty good to me.

Since I don't think we need to save the Culture point at the moment, I'll vote:

[X]Winged One

 

[Xilph]

I missed that with last turns queen already counting yeah, and Harmony 3 goes in the good category instead of the great category as the three I mentioned. Concord 1 gives a bonus we can't replicate ourselves, and Concord 3 both Hunger 4 give us potentially dozens of turns worth of progress in their field within a single turn, by contrast Harmony 3 simple gives us a few extra turns of EP now, and unlike Concord 3 or Hunger 4 it gets better worse over time as the 2d20 becomes less useful and we collect more bonuses making less available. Concord 3 scales up with creep and Hunger 4 scales up with drone count basically, both things that increase over time.

So yeah, I say save the CP, we have no idea really how hard it is to get them and +10% chance of success on something we're already throwing our best stuff at seems like a bit of a waste. If we were going to then at least take something like mine but expanded further, and have the bonus apply to a dozen different scouting actions as well as combat.

 

[Walkir]

[X]Smyter

Losing that iron work camp hurts, but it's hopefully only for one turn.

Edit: [X]Xilph

 

[Daeth]

All other EP bonuses that turn are doubled.

Click to shrink...

With Harmony 3 I think your under estimating the value if this. It might be a bit situational and hard to predict, but this could do great things for us.

 

[Winged One]

They can't, 3 base actions + 1 from Queen gives 4 actions but Winged One has their plan already using five actions. I suggest consulting mine if you want Loom + Forge + Hatchery + Attack Cat, it's similar except with a much greater focus on scouting. Also, why is firing a work crew to form soldiers but then not giving the soldiers an action used?

Click to shrink...

Actually, we also get an action from Artur. As for the soldiers, I kind of made them before I realized that I can't spare any actions for attacking that other cat. I'll set them to defense this turn, I suppose.

 

[SamPardi]

Winged One
Your plan only provides one queen special. There are two of them 'on deck'.

Smyter
You only specify using one queen special, and that's for creep. Then you add another action as though you used miromanage. It works but please spell it out in the plan.

Xilph
Finally someone got the queens perfect... But you forgot Artur's additional action.

Finally CP is never guaranteed. I'm willing to turn Tell Stories into a roll, but it'll be a relatively low one. (30-40%)

 

[Xilph]

On my phone, I'll edit in the other hatchery perhaps? That could be useful, we're producing way more RP than we can use so the extra larvae boost should help mitigate that somewhat, along with giving us tons more drones and zerg to work with.

Also, good to see CP were confirmed as rare, if getting one every few turns is considered typical burning one for a combat buff when we're already using our best stuff seems like overkill. I mean, 100 soldiers led by Artur already seems like overkill for a cat that is giving birth, could we throw some drones into the combat possibly? A drone or two could help there, given each one is worth dozens of humans in stre tht and stamina.

 

[SamPardi]

Xilph feel free. I originally had a few drones but decided I didn't want to add to possible confusion with a long part about how drones used in combat that turn can't be used in gathering. So as long as you understand that, and so long as they are forces that existed before phase 1 of this turn, you can add pretty much whatever back-up you want.

 

[Daeth]

To be honest I'm a bit worried about the Tritium, because if we send out our guys equipped with it through the Gate, the various factions out their will know we have a valuable resource and may try to attack or subjugate us for it. Where as if we go out with just iron/steel then they would likely think us just another group not worth their attention.

That said opening the Gate is a while away yet (I think) so I may be jumping the gun.

Given we have the actions available, I'd recommend getting the Forge, Loom, Trinium and Jungle Appreciation.

However if we do get the Trinium it's all alone quite far from our Militia and by itself relatively defenseless. Considering the won't be any connecting creep, any resource transfers will have to be by drone/human and that will be quite vulnerable to predators, especially if they regularly use the same route.

I'd like to recommend that we try to scout around the Trinium site with an eye to finding any potential predator nests around it which could threaten it.

 

[Winged One]

Winged One
Your plan only provides one queen special. There are two of them 'on deck'.

Click to shrink...

Ah. Can multiple queens Micromanage on the same turn? Edit: Checked Xilph's plan, looks like they can. Added the forge.

Finally CP is never guaranteed. I'm willing to turn Tell Stories into a roll, but it'll be a relatively low one. (30-40%)

Click to shrink...

Good to know. I'm guessing that something less generic would have a better chance?

 

[Hazardine]

[X]Xilph

 

[SamPardi]

Winged One
Maybe. Culture is fickle, but novelty is more likely to impress. On the other hand a story may contain a message that resonates with people and they decide to run with it. Still outside events can play an enormous role, spontaneously evoking defensiveness, or aggression in your populace or driving them inward.

Looking back it will always make sense, but trying to look forwards and predict it is difficult at best.

Edit: I'm not ending this turn until my main computer is running again. That should be tomorrow sometime. Once it is I'll give fair warning so you'll have time to finalize the votes.

 

[Xilph]

Alright, to anybody who cares I just modified my vote. The changes are as follows.

• Took all ten drones off gathering wood, cuts the result down to only a tad over 1 RP left but we have RP to burn so they weren't really needed there anyway.
• Used one of the drones and my spare action to build the lead hatchery as well, that means I build the forge, loom, both hatcheries, look in the jungle, and attack the cat.
• Sent four of the drones as seed to the lead hatchery and another two to the trinium one putting it at five for that.
• Sent the remaining three drones to help with the attack against the great cat, we can spare some drones far more easily than we can spare a culture point.

So there it is, obviously recommend my plan although any critique can be given and I may adjust if I feel it fits with what I'm trying to do or it's better. I'm not spending the culture point here though, higher tiers are much more valuable.

 

[Daeth]

Alright, to anybody who cares I just modified my vote. The changes are as follows.

• Took all ten drones off gathering wood, cuts the result down to only a tad over 1 RP left but we have RP to burn so they weren't really needed there anyway.
• Used one of the drones and my spare action to build the lead hatchery as well, that means I build the forge, loom, both hatcheries, look in the jungle, and attack the cat.
• Sent four of the drones as seed to the lead hatchery and another two to the trinium one putting it at five for that.
• Sent the remaining three drones to help with the attack against the great cat, we can spare some drones far more easily than we can spare a culture point.

So there it is, obviously recommend my plan although any critique can be given and I may adjust if I feel it fits with what I'm trying to do or it's better. I'm not spending the culture point here though, higher tiers are much more valuable.

Click to shrink...

It seems you're not building the Lead Hatchery?

[X] Action: Appreciate Local Jungle
[X] Action: Build Hatchery near Trinium Vein (-10 RP, -1 drone, 5 drones assigned as seed workers)
[ ] Action: Build Hatchery near Lead Vein (-10 RP, -1 drone, 4 drones assigned as seed workers)
[X] Action: Build Zerg Loom (-2 RP, -1 drone)
[X] Action: Build Zerg Forge (-3 RP, -1 drone)


Why go for just one option? Loom, Forge, 1 Hatchery, and the Jungle. I'd have gone for the second Hatchery as well but the cat needs an action to attack.

Click to shrink...

3 Base actions + 1 Artur +2 Queen -1 Great Cat Attack -1 Jungle Appreciation -1 Loom -1 Forge -1 Hatchery = 1 Unspent Action.

 

[Xilph]

Daeth let me just edit that comment to match, I didn't edit any of those so it reflects before accounting for Artur's bonus action, I am doing it as can be seen.

 

[Daeth]

Sorry.

Thought you would edit the Plan then post, not the other way around.

 

[Ame]

[X] Xilph's edited plan

 

[Winged One]

Xilph, may I suggest undedicating that Dancer team and dedicating a Queen? Apparently the "tell stories" action isn't that good, so we'll want to pursue alternatives when they present themselves.

 

[SamPardi]

So my computer is back up and running. Voting closes in approx. 8 hours or so.