Its Avernus assume its psycic until given reason to believe otherwise and when if it isn't then its even more suspicious.
Oh its very likely that Camo Crocks are psychic
somehow, but not necessarily regarding their camouflage. Or more likely, they use psykery to enhance a very good mundane base.
Have you see videos of camouflaged squids? Earth animals can do some fascinating things. No need for psykery, and Avernus does pure biotech too.
I'd have assumed that was the major research since they're one of a few avernite beings that interact with souls so directly. Reducing casualties from a creature that isn't a major contribute to our losses compared to everything else is nice, but unless we can get something else out of it its not really a low hanging fruit.
OK, to explain it completely: Yes, the research would look into the soul eating mechanism, which would need a telepathica follow up, but thats not the low hanging fruit part. Its the habits, natural predators, if they find some smells repulsive, etc. They
eat our peoples souls. Not that many of them as far as I know, but I would think that its worth a few years research to minimize that number.
You might disagree and that's fine. Mechanically, the benefits would not likely be huge.
Saves time and rids is faster.
Because all the current divinations we're going to do are things Rids is specialised for. Information gathering is his thing, not long term prediction.
I would be wholly unsurprised if the Eldar had a seer with a paragon trait that make them able to see target with the letter N in their name really well.
And other such weird conditions.
So better leave them to decide, they know what they can do (which we do not) and what Rids can.
Because they're made in their 20s when they've presumably already had training. Space Marines are recruited as preteens and young teenagers training is required, last hunters are recruited prebirth so training is required thunder warriors if we're recruiting them are not, which is likely how emps was able to conquorer terra at the "fast" pace he did. Just grab some techno barbarians off the street shove the augments in give em some time to adapt to the changes and boom, additional training skipped or minimised.
And your arguments for them not being low hanging fruit tend to be based on assumptions we can't make until we actually do the research. We won't know to say nothing of compounded issues of not knowing if something is good for potential improvements or lack there of if we don't look into them.
Thats like saying that a soldier can fight, so if you give him a PA he does not need any training to fight with it.
Also, with us providing juvenat to our good soldiers, 20y or less olds will be very much below average, skill wise.
Throwing them at the enemy right after conversion might result in enemies killed, but would a bloody stupid waste of a large amount of resources and potential.
Slot B
-Y1: counter intelligence
-Y2: Integrate Varangian Guard
-Y5:counter intelligence
Two times Counter Intel? With Rids divination too? Trust already has excellent security, and we have a large psyker problem currently, with many of our best anti-psykers slain.
SLOT C - Year 4 (Fabricator-General)
-Y4: Expand Military Forces: Mechanicus-
We have massive amounts of extremely valuable tech to implement. This can wait a turn that we could use to increase our production of AM/EM greatly first.
-Y2: Greater Divination (How Chaos Psykers are targeting our anti-psyker forces) Double Dwon Year 2
We also need to know why, and ideally who.
SLOT C - Year 4 (Tamia)
-Y4: Black Ship Protection: Telepathica
This one could really use a DD, considering how vital the project is to sane humanity entire.
SLOT A - Year 1
-Y1: Personal Attention: Technological Improvements: (other)
SLOT B - Year 3
-Y3: Personal Attention: Technological Improvements: (other)
The increase in morale is wasted, and the increase is 4%
of our current pop growth. Compared to +10% Metal, Materiel, and Thrones that the General option provides.
We also have quite a few expensive projects coming up.
1. This is the only real project of interest for the Biologis to do right now. It's this or study some random fauna or flora.
Random?
Avalanche Shrub: Works by eroding and then holding the ground together, ceasing to upon death. Sounds fantastic for surface mining.
Camo Croc: Better or cheaper camouflage.
Razorgrass: Fields of two meter high razor blades. Hmm. I wonder, how difficult would it be for an invading army of, say, orcs, to have to keep burning a path through plains of these? While under the guns of our cities. Might make for a useful defense from non-necron infantry, especialy for our Elysium hives.
Edit: Also, an excellent battleground for our power armored infantry.
Mirage Palm: Makes an illusory oasis so convincing that some animals die of trying to drink sand. Relatives of Illusory Pines probably. If we research them, we might get a project to "Program" them, which might let us, say, plant a bunch of trees that make people believe that they are fortified bunkers or something? Would be VERY useful.
Delta-Vee Bird: Manipulates... Delta V. Which is a term for change of velocity. They can also affect their prey. Yes, this is absurdly OP, maneuverability wise, and might result in psyker fighter squadrons. Also, if we manage to tame flocks of them to work alongside our fighters...
Paranoia Flowers: What it says on the tin. Releases pollen that causes paranoia. Hell yes. We want that bottled and with a range of delivery options. Can you imagine using this on Tzeetchians? Most any chaos? Much less on Avernus, where what most would call paranoia we call survival instinct. Give to our Last Hunters to apply to enemy leaders... Might be better than killing them. By a lot.
Draining Rabbit: Steals "energy" (stamina at least, perhaps more) from nearby creatures. Would postpone or eliminate our Psykers exhaustion maluses probably, even outside of combat, by draining volunteers or animals. VERY useful. I wonder how long it could keep a melee focused battlepsyker going...
Some examples of promising options. All of these are from Regional Information, none from canon Omakes.
Case in point, during the early Great Crusade there was an instance of a rebellion that had some surviving Thunder Warriors supporting it. The Emperor send the War Hounds, who would later be the World Eaters, to put the rebellion down. Each of the Thunder Warriors managed to kill four or five Astartes before going down. There's a reason that Durin referred to them as "transhuman murderblenders".
Now, I want you to consider this - if Thunder Warriors born on Terra could take down four or five Astartes each before dying, how effective do you think Avernite Thunder Warriors would be?
Those were veterans that started with better bodies then SMs versus newbies.
How good would Avernite SM be? Same thing pretty much.
