I'm sort of torn between trying to build the 'bare minimum' force quickly and researching the Ready Reaction Launch Bay vs. getting some fundamental techs first. Even with a 4th research lab finding the space to research necessary technologies is probably our biggest constraint right now.
We could build 2-3 militarized shuttles per turn and reach bare minimum in a few years while researching the bay, but fitting in additional military research with the colony's other needs could be difficult.
A thing we probably should look into is kobold scale tools and vehicles but make sure they have specially designed hard hats and reflex vests. Could boost the bonus to certain jobs
But interesting having a dedicated trigger for digestion.
Ok. I'm for directing things to military research and maybe working on more psi crystal fabrication. Maybe put 2 together and dedicate 1 for particular military use?
As a thought project us having dedicated labs to various categories of endevaor could be really useful. We already have the Blight lab, which could be biotech lab once we work out details. Us getting a Military lab. a High Technology lab. An Orbital Lab. heck in time a Commerce lab. Maybe even a Telepathy lab. Could all be very interesting. (not all at once of course, just piecemeal)
As an aside I was randomly scrolling through this thread and saw the post with the Babylon 5 map. Us not knowing where we are yet is very interesting as it gives us maximum potential in the future. That said I like how we are towards League space and not toward Shadow/Minbari/Vorlon space. Lots more potential. Also I like how we are in an area that has potential open space for expansion rimward. That said it will be super interesting to see what happens when we meet Earth again.
As for what we need to do now. Hmm. That is such a hard thing to think about. I def think more Blight research. I also like the building up of industry. The research of grav-tech, really think that would help.
Also we could do some psychic research stuff.
Also the idea of us doing more infrastructure and civilian economy build up could be super useful and fun.
Ok. I'm for directing things to military research and maybe working on more psi crystal fabrication. Maybe put 2 together and dedicate 1 for particular military use?
The Civilian Autofactories/Lab/Psi-Cystal Machine work outside of the Questors' control, and if we ever drew on them we would lose morale. The trick is that most military construction is under our control. We could give the militia it's own Autofactory and Psi-Crystal Machine, but most major builds would still involve the infrastructure under Questor control.
I'm not opposed to the idea, but every time I try to think in terms of the plan almost every Psi-Crystal machine is already involved in miltary production or research this turn, without handing one over and out of our control.
Our Research situation:
We are going to finish the current Blight project this turn in Lab 1.
We might finish the current Future Transport project in Lab 3, but it's unlikely.
We can build Lab 4, with Lab 2 that gives us 2 labs.
If we want to start on the Gravity plating then the first step is to decommission the Colony ship. This will take at least 1 Lab to do a detailed inventory of the ship's systems, and our Diplomacy Action for the decommissioning ceremony.
We could assign 1 Lab to start working on weaponry, or on the control systems to make a basic fighter.
A thing we probably should look into is kobold scale tools and vehicles but make sure they have specially designed hard hats and reflex vests. Could boost the bonus to certain jobs
Ok. I'm for directing things to military research and maybe working on more psi crystal fabrication. Maybe put 2 together and dedicate 1 for particular military use?
The Civilian Autofactories/Lab/Psi-Cystal Machine work outside of the Questors' control, and if we ever drew on them we would lose morale. The trick is that most military construction is under our control. We could give the militia it's own Autofactory and Psi-Crystal Machine, but most major builds would still involve the infrastructure under Questor control.
I'm not opposed to the idea, but every time I try to think in terms of the plan almost every Psi-Crystal machine is already involved in miltary production or research this turn, without handing one over and out of our control.
So in another quest there were Actions that basically resulted in "this is now automatically considered done when needed" which is how something like this could be applied depending on how things are phrased.
The example in the other quest was something like automated regiment restaffing, so before the players needed to take an action to recruit after a battle or significant events. After this action was taken the military did that on the side automatically without us taking an action.
In this game's terms the dedicated factory is doing the thing we set it up for, and its doing it well, but its doing it without us having to say yes to it. A side effect of this could be greater morale or support within various groups. Like say we build a fab and dedicate it to the 'military', well they don't need permission to rearm, it just happens. This makes them happy. They can't use it for new things, that requires permission, but they never have to worry about reaching the status quo. Same with the civilian sector if we create a fab for the 'civilian economy'.
Just an idea.
Related is that we could create a Housing Construction Sector with its own dedicated Autofactory so that the idea is behind the scenes there is always housing being constructed as the population grows, without us having to manually take charge. We set up the bureaucracy and the infrastructure and the people we trust handle it.
We are going to finish the current Blight project this turn in Lab 1.
We might finish the current Future Transport project in Lab 3, but it's unlikely.
We can build Lab 4, with Lab 2 that gives us 2 labs.
If we want to start on the Gravity plating then the first step is to decommission the Colony ship. This will take at least 1 Lab to do a detailed inventory of the ship's systems, and our Diplomacy Action for the decommissioning ceremony.
We could assign 1 Lab to start working on weaponry, or on the control systems to make a basic fighter.
Us finishing current Blight project is good, though we will probably then use it for a new Blight project. lol.
Though maybe we could study psychic genetics, that could be an interesting thing to start.
On the gravity plating do we need to actually take the ship apart? I mean do we have spares in the sock or maybe take apart a section in the chamber we don't use, or whatever.
But yeah, short term no colony ship for long term artifiical gravity does seem like a win.
Fighter is good but 'armed shuttle' might be better. Or something modular that can be adopted as needed based on projects going on.
[] Goodbye Old Friend
-[] Major Event: Decommission the Centauri-built colony ship
-[] Industry:
--[] 1 Autofactory will serve as 3 Autofabbers this turn (1/9)
--[] Build 1 Storm hardened Basic Autofactory: Cost: -2 Autofabber (2/5). -6 Minerals.
--[] Build 2 Telekinetic Militia Equipment. Cost: -2 Autofabber (4/5), -2 Psi-Crystal Machine (2/4), -4 Minerals.
--[] Build 1 Storm hardened Warehouse. Cost: -1 Autofabber, -1 Minerals
--[] Build 1 Storm hardened science lab, -1 Autofactory, (2/10) -5 Minerals -1 biomass
--[] Build 1 Storm hardened, Blight hardened Exowomb Nursery. Cost: -1 Autofactory, (3/10) -3 Minerals. -2 Food
--[] Build 1 Storm hardened Psi-Crystal Machine. Cost: -6 Minerals, -2 Biomass, -1 Psi-Crystal Machine (3/5), -1 Autofactory Action (4/10)
--[] Build 1 Militarized Shuttle: Cost: -1 Autofactory Action (4/10), -1 Psi-Crystal Machine Action (4/5), -7 Minerals, -6 Biomass.
--[] Build 1 Storm Hardened Shipscale Fusion Reactor. Cost: -16 Minerals, -4 Autofactories (8/10)
--[] Syngas Burn Rate set to 0/3
--[] Remaining 2 Autofactories and 1 Psi-Crystal Machine held in reserve to fulfill other Actions
-[] Orbital
--[] 1 supply (1/8)
--[] 4 asteroid mining (5/8)
--[] 3 Probe launches (8/8)
-[] Military:
--[] Civil Defense. With enough enhanced weaponry available to ensure who wants a little weekend training time can get it the militia will focus on civil defense training. What to do if we are attacked, where to hide, where to go if you are hurt, and make sure everyone who would want to fight can do so.
-[] Exploration:
--[] Build probes to be sent to the 3 dwarf planets in the Kith Prime C system.
-[] Research:
--[] Lab 1 will continue current project
--[] Lab 2 will conduct a detailed examination of the decommissioned Colony Ship. Highest priority is the preservation of the gravity plating for study. After that try to look at other components while not ripping the ship apart too badly. The ship served us well.
--[] Lab 3 will continue current project
--[] Lab 4 will focus on Psi-Crystal assisted weaponry, fighter/shuttle scale
-[] Diplomacy:
--[] Hold the decommissioning ceremony. It's funny to think that the overwhelming majority of the people in attendance have no memory of fleeing Earth or the voyage here. Besides the uptimers those born on Kithmake now outnumber the first colonists. As this event passes into memory, and then into History, it's worth it to take a moment to commemorate our voyage and the last two decades that have followed. Before any components are removed recordings should be made of the ship's entire interior, a record of the ship as it was. Once useful technology has been extracted from the vessel what remains should be stored in a secure hardened warehouse or hanger safe from the storms and with as much climate control as we can manage to preserve it. One day this may be part of a museum, or even a museum ship if we can keep the hull together while extracting the gravity plating
-[] Personal:
--[] Walk the old ship one last time before the crews get to work on her. Then head home to Mira and the girls. It's times like this that you think about Legacy, about what you leave behind when your time passes.
I could fit a fair bit more building in if we used Orbital Actions and more minirals to install more Solar farms. Worth thinking about, but we hadn't built the new reactor yet and it seemed like a good time, but we could manage more building with the solar farms.
I wasn't sure if we could reach Kith Prime A system with probes, so I stuck to the C system for now. Still several years worth of probe missions there. If we want to spend Orbital actions on Solar farms instead there is a lot of planetside exploration still to do
Increasing the supply of militia equipment to match the population and doing Civil Defense training as an action was just a little maintenance. It might be a good idea to just give the militia an autofactory and a psi-crystal machine of their own for maintenance like this. We could do that this turn actually, but we would need to give up something else or lose the availability of a Machine for the science projects. This doesn't feel like a good idea when crystal weaponry is one of those projects
@Servetus OMG on that. I got a little wow on it. Kind of emotional. I love it!
Also us doing a walk and a record and a ceremony is just so beautiful. Love it!
So brilliant!
All the stuff here is really great. The potential of orbital solar farms and stuff is also great for the future.
Great plan! Thanks for writing it. Really awesome stuff.
---
side comment. Soooo what do we have to do to become immortal? So our guy stays in charge and will continue to live during the Babylon 5 Era. hehe. (also its too bad we don't have a son and a daughter as that would have been cool)
I just realized that we had crossed the 20 year mark, and felt a bit like referencing Sleeping in Light.
I didn't think we could get enough of the gravity plating out without compromising the ship's function, and given that we don't know how artificial gravity works I couldn't imagine sending people out in the ship when you weren't sure if the gravity would be on or off. Better to decommission the ship with some ceremony than send it out and risk an accident.
I do have to wonder how weird James and Mira look by the colony's standards with only 2 kids. Compared to the family sizes we're seeing with the Exowomb adoption.
Alright, we can make Kobold Health and Safety the Diplomatic action next turn.
If we pivoted away from the probes to planetary exploration and put in more orbital solar farms instead of the reactor it would free up some production capacity.
Can anyone think of extra things we could add to the build if we did that?
Right now I picked the Big Reactor for Readiness reasons. Orbital solar farms are pretty fragile, whereas with planetary targets they would need to either accurately drop rocks on the reactor or come down to get it.
Alright, we can make Kobold Health and Safety the Diplomatic action next turn.
If we pivoted away from the probes to planetary exploration and put in more orbital solar farms instead of the reactor it would free up some production capacity.
Can anyone think of extra things we could add to the build if we did that?
Right now I picked the Big Reactor for Readiness reasons. Orbital solar farms are pretty fragile, whereas with planetary targets they would need to either accurately drop rocks on the reactor or come down to get it.
I do have to wonder how weird James and Mira look by the colony's standards with only 2 kids. Compared to the family sizes we're seeing with the Exowomb adoption.
Well there's a few women from each Clan that have been creche-rearing most of the exowomb-born as their own actually. Kind of professional mothers if you will. So family sizes are a little skewed. There's maybe three or four women per Clan with like a dozen kids each (they get help from other Clan parents, each other, and kobold nannies), and then the rest of the families of the colony are roughly evenly split with natural born and exowomb kids.
So while the average family size is quite large, it's kind of a "Spiders Georg" scenario: there's a lump of twenty or so families with a dozen kids each and then you see about 2-4 kids per couple outside of that, with people in leader roles tending to have fewer. So John and Mira with just Juniper and Aspen are unusual only in it having been a single birth ... but "it wasn't for a lack of trying on their part, the poor dears".
Juniper and Aspen meanwhile are entirely convinced they have forty brothers and sisters and nobody is allowed to convince them otherwise.
You could Roboticize/automate your existing lumber camps, farms, or the like. Incrases energy consumption but could have significant gains for output, plus it would free up Jobs. You could also build another Fishing Fleet or another GEV Hangar for expressly military readiness, or reserve Autofactory operations for Research.
@KNakamura that image brings up an interesting issue that we have. Most of our weaponry plans so far have been based on the psi-crystals and the amps. But both those technologies require telepathic gifts to use, if we handed one of our guns to a Narn or a mundane human it wouldn't work. We have used that to progress much faster than we would have without the ability to use telekinesis to make our technology work, but that offers problems in automation. If we tried to design an unmanned defense satellite or a drone fighter we could only use conventional weapons on it, no telekinesis enhanced lasers or reactionless projectile weapons.
It's not a bad idea, maybe once we research the fusion torch we can try to miniaturize it and make missiles we could fire from a platform.
@blankmask If no one else has grabbed to reins by next turn I think we can pop in a dedicated military Autofactory and Psi-Crystal machine. I just couldn't find a way to fit it in with the weapons, the shuttle, and supporting weapons research this turn.
Edit: @Logos01 is there a production cost to increasing automation at facilities? Besides increased energy upkeep I mean. Because with the amounts of energy we produce we could do a lot, but autofabber time is limited.
Edit: @Logos01 is there a production cost to increasing automation at facilities? Besides increased energy upkeep I mean. Because with the amounts not of energy we produce we could do a lot, but autofabber time is limited.
In reality yes, but it's abstracted away mechanically. Part of the energy cost is in fabber time to get spare parts but this doesn't require Build Actions to reflect it as a Quest Mechanical thing. You could also assume safely that there will be dedicated part printers as part of the Roboticized upgrade that are specialized equipment that can only make spares, or something like that.
[X] Goodbye Old Friend
-[X] Major Event: Decommission the Centauri-built colony ship
-[X] Industry:
--[X] 3 Autofactories will serve as 9 Autofabbers this turn (3/9)
--[X] Build 2 Storm hardened Basic Autofactories: Cost: -4 Autofabber (4/11). -12 Minerals.
--[X] Build 2 Telekinetic Militia Equipment. Cost: -2 Autofabber (6/11), -2 Psi-Crystal Machine (2/4), -4 Minerals.
--[X] Build 12 Orbital solar farms and boost them to Orbit. Cost: -24 Minerals,= -1 Autofabber (7/11), 1 Orbital Action
--[X] Build 1 Storm hardened Basic Vehicular Maintenance Bay. Specialized for military use. Cost: -2 Autofabber (9/11), -2 Biomass, -3 Minerals.
--[X] Build 1 Storm hardened Warehouse. Cost: 1 Autofabber Action (10/11), -1 Minerals
--[X] Build 1 Storm hardened Hydro Reservoir. Cost: 1 Autofabber Action (11/11), -3 Minerals
--[X] Build 1 Storm hardened science lab, -1 Autofactory, (4/11) -5 Minerals -1 biomass
--[X] Build 1 Storm hardened, Blight hardened Exowomb Nursery. Cost: -1 Autofactory, (5/11) -3 Minerals. -2 Food
--[X] Build 1 Storm hardened Psi-Crystal Machine. Cost: -6 Minerals, -2 Biomass, -1 Psi-Crystal Machine (3/5), -1 Autofactory Action (6/11)
--[X] Build 1 Militarized Shuttle: Cost: -1 Autofactory Action (7/11), -1 Psi-Crystal Machine Action (4/5), -7 Minerals, -6 Biomass.
--[X] Build 1 Solar Satellite and boost to Orbit. Cost: -5 Minerals, -1 Autofactory Action (8/11), 1 Orbital Operation
--[X] Total Build cost -2 Food, -74 Minerals, -10 Biomass
--[X] Syngas Burn Rate set to 0/3
--[X] Remaining 3 Autofactories and 1 Psi-Crystal Machine held in reserve to fulfill other Actions
-[X] Orbital
--[X] 1 supply Job (1/8)
--[X] 4 asteroid mining (5/8)
--[X] 2 Building installations (7/8)
--[X] 1 Shakedown flights. The new militarized shuttle needs to be taken out to test capabilities and provide data to Lab 4's research. Crew needs to become familiar with the craft as well.
-[X] Military:
--[X] Design and build Special Ops training facility. To support the Matriarch's efforts to create a special ops tradition training facilities must be created. Creating designs for such a facility is closer to Mira's expertise than any of our research teams so designing training facilities falls to the militia, as does supporting the Matriarchs' efforts with promising recruits.
-[X] Exploration:
--[X] Continue planetary surveys in the area around the colony, now with support from the Orbital Sensor network
-[X] Research:
--[X] Lab 1 will continue current project
--[X] Lab 2 will conduct a detailed examination of the decommissioned Colony Ship. Highest priority is the preservation of the gravity plating for study. After that try to look at other components while not ripping the ship apart too badly. The ship served us well and it would nice to keep some kind of memorial.
--[X] Lab 3 will continue current project
--[X] Lab 4 will focus on Psi-Crystal assisted weaponry, fighter/shuttle scale
-[X] Diplomacy:
--[X] Hold the decommissioning ceremony. It's funny to think that the overwhelming majority of the people in attendance have no memory of fleeing Earth or the voyage here. Besides the uptimers those born on Kithmake now outnumber the first colonists. As this event passes into memory, and then into History, it's worth it to take a moment to commemorate our voyage and the last two decades that have followed. Before any components are removed recordings should be made of the ship's entire interior, a record of the ship as it was. Once useful technology has been extracted from the vessel what remains should be stored in a secure hardened warehouse or hanger safe from the storms and with as much climate control as we can manage to preserve it. One day this may be part of a museum, or even a museum ship if we can keep the hull together while extracting the gravity plating
-[X] Personal:
--[X] Walk the old ship one last time before the crews get to work on her. Then head home to Mira and the girls. It's times like this that you think about Legacy, about what you leave behind when your time passes.
Swapped the big Reactor for more Solar panels. This may prove to be a Readiness issue but we can build a lot more this way, and we have the mineral income to pay the higher costs. After rereading the Results from last turn I realized that the Matriarchs had specifically asked for something so I had to change the military action. Also while rereading I realized that the Sensors boosted planetary survey actions, so we might as well use the bonus.
One of these days we will build that reactor.
Edited: Build changed after Energy storage discussion and updated numbers. We didn't need the Extra Fishing capacity immediately, but we need Energy Storage options.
I should point out that Roboticization of a Basic facility requires an Autofactory action and has a Minerals cost. And then you must assign a value (0-3) of how much Energy/t you want to spend on that Facility, with that value mapping to the increased output of said Facility.
In other words, if you spend 2 Autofactory Actions and 4 Minerals, you can Roboticize the Ironwood Lumber Camps and at a cost of 3E/t each increase them from their current 2M/t, 2B/t to 5M/t, 5B/t ea.
This would cost you a total of 6E/t but increase them from 4M/t + 4B/t to 10M/t + 10B/t. It would also free up 2 Jobs.
I should point out that Roboticization of a Basic facility requires an Autofactory action and has a Minerals cost. And then you must assign a value (0-3) of how much Energy/t you want to spend on that Facility, with that value mapping to the increased output of said Facility.
In other words, if you spend 2 Autofactory Actions and 4 Minerals, you can Roboticize the Ironwood Lumber Camps and at a cost of 3E/t each increase them from their current 2M/t, 2B/t to 5M/t, 5B/t ea.
This would cost you a total of 6E/t but increase them from 4M/t + 4B/t to 10M/t + 10B/t. It would also free up 2 Jobs.
