The Long Night Part One: Embers in the Dusk: A Planetary Governor Quest (43k) Complete Sequel Up

Doomed Wombat said:

Aye, but as he said the ring leaders and most highly placed people have already been eliminated, the Inquisition and their own internal forces are ferreting out people as fast as they can and we're going to have to do it eventually, starting now when the situation can be described as "o ****" doesn't seem unreasonable.

This is to say nothing of the fact that it seems rather arrogant to treat tech being nicked off them as being inevitable, we've traded tech to them in the past, a large amount of it at that and to our knowledge the only time they let it be taken was when Turoq stole some. It hardily seems like they're just letting people waltz in despite the spies, unless of course its Alpha legion.

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As has been pointed out we may not have gotten all the high level people since the DN was pretty big and IIRC Rids admits he likely missed a few people. Remember, there have been noted to be thousands of spies still in the DN. And no, I'm not assuming that they are just letting people waltz in. The issue is that it's pretty hard to stop tech and secrets from being stolen and we ourselves despite all our security, which is leagues better than DN, still risk having our tech stolen from time to time and that's without needing to worry about thousands of spies in a number of places.

Red Bovine said:

As has been pointed out we may not have gotten all the high level people since the DN was pretty big and IIRC Rids admits he likely missed a few people. Remember, there have been noted to be thousands of spies still in the DN. And no, I'm not assuming that they are just letting people waltz in. The issue is that it's pretty hard to stop tech and secrets from being stolen and we ourselves despite all our security, which is leagues better than DN, still risk having our tech stolen from time to time and that's without needing to worry about thousands of spies in a number of places.

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Durin said:

High Grandmaster Ridcully spent a year helping Dragon's Nest deal with infiltrators of varying types. Due to the scale of Dragon's Nest he was forced to focus on only the most dangerous infiltrators and their cells, which included an Adeptus Mechanicus Magos, several senior Administratum Adepts and an Cruiser Captain. While these traitors have been removed High Grandmaster Ridcully is sure that there are thousands of spies in less critical positions that have so far avoided notice.

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No Rids seems pretty confident that he got all the most important ones, there's thousands of less important ones, but what can you do.

And apparently this is thanks to the Alpha Legion, not the random yubbos of the locals.

To say the least though if we give them say the data jewels it likely increases their security.

Doomed Wombat said:

No Rids seems pretty confident that he got all the most important ones, there's thousands of less important ones, but what can you do.

And apparently this is thanks to the Alpha Legion, not the random yubbos of the locals.

To say the least though if we give them say the data jewels it likely increases their security.

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Rather we not solely rely on assumptions since I still remember that time that people assumed that we didn't need to send Rids help during the last demonic incursion because they were sure he wouldn't need it despite protests nearly ended up getting him killed even when he got a 90+ on his roll. Think we should wait on Durin to answer the questions people asked in regards to this earlier.

[X] Vote Suggestion 2
-[x] We have agreed to and currently in talks with Dragon's nest in forming a single polity. When combined and given all our technology, together we will be able to quadruple our current military strength. As well as giving them a boost they will also be able to upgrade. While we are all worrried about the Tyranids they are not the only problem we are facing. With a Waagh in the region expected to hit the chaos polities we need are allies even more and tech exchange will help them and us greatly. For those of you worrried about tech theft we do have agreements helping Dragon's nest with their spy problem.

if we look just at the nids, I'd go for option 1, but we're also looking at the aftermath. There will be a period of opportunity with all local powers damaged and reeling from the nids. going with option 2 means dragons nest will be better placed to take advantage of that opening. Including using it to crush anyone who managed to nick the tech we're sharing.

Red Bovine said:

Rather we not solely rely on assumptions since I still remember that time that people assumed that we didn't need to send Rids help during the last demonic incursion because they were sure he wouldn't need it despite protests nearly ended up getting him killed even when he got a 90+ on his roll. Think we should wait on Durin to answer the questions people asked in regards to this earlier.

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I'm not relying solely on assumption, I'm using what we know.

In fairness we should have seen that coming.

Equally foreseeing that Khorne would deploy 3 Honoured to try and kill us wasn't exactly reasonable since that was the bulk of what screwed Rids.

But, of course we shall see.

random_npc said:

if we look just at the nids, I'd go for option 1, but we're also looking at the aftermath. There will be a period of opportunity with all local powers damaged and reeling from the nids. going with option 2 means dragons nest will be better placed to take advantage of that opening. Including using it to crush anyone who managed to nick the tech we're sharing.

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As has been pointed out repeatedly only Amrika is getting hit by Nids with the other local polities being fine afterwards. Long term it would still be an issue if the other polities got access to our tech, more so if their spies are able to learn of said tech and that DN is going to merge with the Trust in the future. Not to mention grabbing attention from beyond the Sector which we are trying to avoid.

random_npc said:

if we look just at the nids, I'd go for option 1, but we're also looking at the aftermath. There will be a period of opportunity with all local powers damaged and reeling from the nids. going with option 2 means dragons nest will be better placed to take advantage of that opening. Including using it to crush anyone who managed to nick the tech we're sharing.

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To be fair that is assuming that they manage to build all the infrastructure and stuff required to take advantage of that tech and manage to then produce that tech in large enough quantities to make a difference before that moment of vulnerability passes.

Red Bovine said:

As has been pointed out repeatedly only Amrika is getting hit by Nids with the other local polities being fine afterwards. Long term it would still be an issue if the other polities got access to our tech, more so if their spies are able to learn of said tech and that DN is going to merge with the Trust in the future. Not to mention grabbing attention from beyond the Sector which we are trying to avoid.

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The other big Chaos polities are about to be dealing with the terror of a T3 Waaagh. They're likely to end up crippled, if not destroyed outright.

Red Bovine said:

As has been pointed out repeatedly only Amrika is getting hit by Nids with the other local polities being fine afterwards. Long term it would still be an issue if the other polities got access to our tech, more so if their spies are able to learn of said tech and that DN is going to merge with the Trust in the future. Not to mention grabbing attention from beyond the Sector which we are trying to avoid.

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Enjou said:

The other big Chaos polities are about to be dealing with the terror of a T3 Waaagh. They're likely to end up crippled, if not destroyed outright.

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Yeah...in fact as I recall chances are they're going to die and then we're going to have to boogie to kill the level 3 before it gathers up steam again.

Chaos dominance in the region continuing is not impossible, but its likely its going to be bashed to hell and back for a decent while yet.

Red Bovine said:

As has been pointed out repeatedly only Amrika is getting hit by Nids with the other local polities being fine afterwards. Long term it would still be an issue if the other polities got access to our tech, more so if their spies are able to learn of said tech and that DN is going to merge with the Trust in the future. Not to mention grabbing attention from beyond the Sector which we are trying to avoid.

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if they all completely sit this out, we're probably going to be dead anyways. they are likely going to be at the very least sending out their fleets, and without our intel advantage they are likely going to end up taking losses. there is also the tire 3 waagh that's going to be rampaging around. I find the outcome of most of the local chaos polities being fine after this to be an unlikely one. at most one or two of them will be untouched, but again, I doubt anyone will be fully sitting this out except the nex who lack FTL.

Ulrad said:

To be fair that is assuming that they manage to build all the infrastructure and stuff required to take advantage of that tech and manage to then produce that tech in large enough quantities to make a difference before that moment of vulnerability passes.

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they nids are going to be a long fight. i'd say stuff rolled out in the next 15-20 years will be useful for the nids, but stuff rolled out in the next 30-35 years will be useful for the aftermath.

[X] Vote Suggestion 1
-[X] Provide Dragon's Nest will all Tier 1 and 2 technology that you have access to along with Tier 3 Technology that is intended for use by Astartes.
-[X] Point out that the Blood Dragons are still dealing with significant numbers of spies from Chaos polities, possibly including agents of the Alpha Legion. Until Grandmaster Ridcully and the Inquisition can flush them out, giving the Blood Dragons higher tier technologies poses a great risk to the Trust's future security.
-[X] Argue that the higher-tier technology transfer will not help the Blood Dragons in the coming war against the Tyranids, as they will not have sufficient time necessary to upgrade the industries required to construct and maintain the high-tier technologies.
-[X] Waiting until the end of the current Tyrannic War will let us assess the future strategic situation better, as we will be certain which the local Chaos polities will continue to be security threats to the Trust.

I have an important question I'm going to add to my durin questions: Can the Trust spend our windfall in increased productivity in ways that will be effective against tyranids before they get here.
I was under the impression that Avernus forces were far more expensive than most, but we're pulling even with our expenses out of our own productivity, so the other Trust planets might have resources significantly exceeding their military expenditures. Would sending Dragon's nest Advanced Material be worthwhile? Would it be practical, both in expenses and in travel cost?

Things like this are one of the reasons why I've been thinking that we should have accepted the proposal to have people in charge of specific areas trust-wide. I might actually try to push that in the upcoming merger, assuming Dragon's Nest doesn't already insist on it.

Ok, I am all for sharing most of our TechBase, even all of it, but AFTER we have cleaned the infiltrators out of Dragon Nest.

And Rids is going to have his pretty full with the Nids, nudging Chaos, and Trying to get a few more Eldar Favors.

[X] Vote Suggestion 1
-[X] Provide Dragon's Nest will all Tier 1 and 2 technology that you have access to along with Tier 3 Technology that is intended for use by Astartes.
-[X] Point out that the Blood Dragons are still dealing with significant numbers of spies from Chaos polities, possibly including agents of the Alpha Legion. Until Grandmaster Ridcully and the Inquisition can flush them out, giving the Blood Dragons higher tier technologies poses a great risk to the Trust's future security.
-[X] Argue that the higher-tier technology transfer will not help the Blood Dragons in the coming war against the Tyranids, as they will not have sufficient time necessary to upgrade the industries required to construct and maintain the high-tier technologies.
-[X] Waiting until the end of the current Tyrannic War will let us assess the future strategic situation better, as we will be certain which the local Chaos polities will continue to be security threats to the Trust.

Based on the text results from our infiltrator rooting Divination, we've cleared out spies placed highly enough to nick high-tier tech as things stand. The Magos, Cruiser Captain, and the admin Adepts were the most dangerous infiltrators—we are unlikely to need to worry about there being traitors as highly placed as them.

Now, left alone the other spies would be capable of moving up the ladder to a point where they can get their hands on stuff as highly placed as that lot could, but we're not leaving them alone. Anything that would require a position as advanced as, say, Cruiser Captain or higher to steal is effectively safe.

So let's take a look at what T3 tech is. For Naval tech it is the hyper plasma reactor, Ragnarok Cannon, and Dreadnought designs. None of which are things a Cruiser Captain would be able to steal—hyper plasma can be miniaturized down to battlecruiser as things stand, and that's the smallest platform we've got with the Ragnarok Cannon. Now, there are some things we got from the exchange that might be T3 and deployed on smaller ship classes (such as the repair nanites), but stealing an escort ship even as an escort ship Captain should be pretty tricky, given that the crew is unlikely to be even majority coopted (as that would introduce too many potential avenues of detection) and the escorts themselves are going to be almost exclusively deployed with a greater fleet.

Then there's T3 ground tech. That's advanced power armor variants and semi-exotic weapons (Grav and neutron laser) basically. Given that Dragon's Nest has a lot of skilled Astares, giving them this tech is a huge and relatively immediate boost in their ground fighting power—due to Astares being bullshit they don't need to produce many of them at all to equip them. As for it being stolen...well, it's next to impossible to prevent enemies from getting their hands on at least a few examples of infantry equipment, but actual designs and the know-how to produce them are going to be easy to protect given the very limited number of people needed in producing them.

Overall, I would say that the risk of T3 tech getting out if we give it to Dragon's Nest now is extremely low, and while it wouldn't provide the sort of benefits as the T1 and T2 tech it would still provide an immediate and non-trivial boost to Dragon Nest's combat power.

Durin said:

High Grandmaster Ridcully spent a year helping Dragon's Nest deal with infiltrators of varying types. Due to the scale of Dragon's Nest he was forced to focus on only the most dangerous infiltrators and their cells, which included an Adeptus Mechanicus Magos, several senior Administratum Adepts and an Cruiser Captain. While these traitors have been removed High Grandmaster Ridcully is sure that there are thousands of spies in less critical positions that have so far avoided notice.

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@Durin, have all of the high-level spies in Dragon's Nest like those mentioned above been removed (leaving only the lower level ones), or are there still people like them?

Reynal said:

So let's take a look at what T3 tech is. For Naval tech it is the hyper plasma reactor, Ragnarok Cannon, and Dreadnought designs. None of which are things a Cruiser Captain would be able to steal—hyper plasma can be miniaturized down to battlecruiser as things stand, and that's the smallest platform we've got with the Ragnarok Cannon. Now, there are some things we got from the exchange that might be T3 and deployed on smaller ship classes (such as the repair nanites), but stealing an escort ship even as an escort ship Captain should be pretty tricky, given that the crew is unlikely to be even majority coopted (as that would introduce too many potential avenues of detection) and the escorts themselves are going to be almost exclusively deployed with a greater fleet.

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The Ragnarok Cannon is also a great battleship killer weapon. And the Nids have 1,400 Battleship sized bioships, which is a number that may well increase. For a lot of the other stuff, it's better if the ships they'll be building over the next 40 years until the Tyranids arrive have them, rather than having to be refit to add it all later since that takes away from other naval build up actions.

And as far as Dreadnoughts go, option 2 doesn't provide them.

Reynal said:

Then there's T3 ground tech. That's advanced power armor variants and semi-exotic weapons (Grav and neutron laser) basically. Given that Dragon's Nest has a lot of skilled Astares, giving them this tech is a huge and relatively immediate boost in their ground fighting power—due to Astares being bullshit they don't need to produce many of them at all to equip them. As for it being stolen...well, it's next to impossible to prevent enemies from getting their hands on at least a few examples of infantry equipment, but actual designs and the know-how to produce them are going to be easy to protect given the very limited number of people needed in producing them

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There's also a very limited number of places in the Dragon's Nest that could likely produce them in the short term, and I don't think it's likely that early on the Dragon's Nest would bother trying to implement many of them. So they won't be spreading that design far and wide in their polity, keeping them in places where they'll be produced for the Astartes. Those are the kinds of places we'll have already swept for the dangerous infiltrators, like that Magos, so the chances of the designs being swiped is very low.


We're also, as has been pointed out, going to keep rooting out the infiltrators. We'll spend a Focused Divination on that next turn, which is likely to result in even larger numbers of infiltrators found than last time since Ridcully will be spending two years on it and that's actually a better action than Greater Divination for this kind of thing, and Ridcully will focus his efforts on the places where tech is most likely to be able to be stolen from first. Plus, the lower end ones that are still left might be able to get some of the T1 and T2 tech, but that's something option 1 already trades anyways. So yeah, Reynal's point about it being hard for those types to swipe the T3 tech (which the Dragon's Nest is likely to be guarding closely) seems like it'd be pretty low.

ok, so something I relized that might be a good case for plan 2. Plan 2 gives the dragons nest what it needs to make Gjallarhorn Battlecrusers and deploy Ragnarok cannons. Why is this important? because Ragnarok cannons are stupid good, possibly against nids in particular. See, nids at least used to need capital ship sized hive ships to direct the escort and cruiser sized hiveships, and Ragnarok cannons are the best battleship killer weapons we have. at first glance it looks like they send 27% of their damage into BBs, but they also send 19% into Dreadnoughts. That means in the absence of a dreadnought scale hiveships, they will be sending 46% of their damage into battleships. that is insane, whats more they have the raw damage to rip most battleships apart.



here is the math for what a squadron of Gjallarhorn Battlecrusers firing their main guns at extreme range would do the Batleship sized hive ships.
((72*6)*0.35)*0.46= 69.552

now, this is before armor, but they have piecing 12. a typical battleship has armor 8, and nids have specked out of armor. so armor is unlikely to cause a major reduction in damage. an imperail BB has 14 shields and 55 hp, I expect a hiveship would be around that much. so in a singly volley, a squadron of Gjallarhorn battlecruisers will just about kill a battleship scale hiveship.* That is at extreme range, where most weapons are slap fighting. wanna see what it does at long?

well the math now looks like ((72*6)*0.80)*0.46=158.976

so that's a bit over twice the damage. meaning we're looking at at least two dead battleships, per volley. this is per battlecruiser squadron. that is a massive amount of firepower out of a battlecruiser squadron, and BC is fast enough to build that they should be able to churn out a run or so of them in time to be of major use. each takes only 12 years to build, and only needs a Huge shipyard to produce. Dragons nest would likely be able to field them in useful numbers.


So, TLDR** the second option will let dragons nest build a ship that is stupid good at killing Tyranid battleships, and the last time we saw them they needed those battleships to maintain effective CnC of their space born assets. Given how much of this fight will be determined in space, that is a massive edge for dragons nest. Even if the nids don't need Battleships for CnC, capital ship supremacy is still a massive edge in a space battle.


* pre armor the damage would near exactly kill it. i'm assuming the lances will make up the difference for the last few % of its hp since I rather doubt it will get much armor mitigation.
** totes fair. its long and mathy. My eyes glazed over a few times while I was writing it.

[X] Vote Suggestion 2
-[x] We have agreed to and currently in talks with Dragon's nest in forming a single polity. When combined and given all our technology, together we will be able to quadruple our current military strength. As well as giving them a boost they will also be able to upgrade. While we are all worrried about the Tyranids they are not the only problem we are facing. With a Waagh in the region expected to hit the chaos polities we need are allies even more and tech exchange will help them and us greatly. For those of you worrried about tech theft we do have agreements helping Dragon's nest with their spy problem.

Quick question - we can only do 3 Greater Divinations per turn, but if we use all three, can we still do other kinds of divination?

StormySky said:

Quick question - we can only do 3 Greater Divinations per turn, but if we use all three, can we still do other kinds of divination?

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Yes we can. That is why we can use the focus divination to help with spies.

Edit Mandraked

Is a greater or focused divination better for rooting out spies?

StormySky said:

Is a greater or focused divination better for rooting out spies?

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Focused give greater details so I believe focus.

A few questions for @Durin:

1. Is Tormod going to be an only child?
2. Can minor favors earned from actions done after the meeting still give us more warhosts?
3. How secure is Dragon's Nest right now?
4 How exactly does lending Frederick to the Eldar work?
a. Does it require 10 consecutive years or can we split them up and just count the total?
b. Does doing it lock down all personal actions or only one slot?

I think it might be time to expand the inquisition, especially the parts that deal with infiltrators. We would need them eventually when we merge with the Dragons Nest. So by expanding them now we can actually use them to clean the Nest.

Argle Bargle.

[X] Nurgle

Seeing as my proposal to get D. Nest T4 Astartes Tech has fallen through.