Nice to see you updating again Cooky!
I have no strong opinions on what we're giving up -- it looks like we were already somewhat pre-emptive in our planning, since we were only offering what we were mostly comfortable with giving up anyways.
[X] Plan: Considerable Commerce To Counter Chaos
They are giving you [The Good Shit] in exchange for [Moderately Good Stuff]. That numbers imbalance is a result from you not putting out your [Good Shit].
To be frank, I'd be surprised on Van Zandt being willing to bring out their Good Shit (albeit I do believe they're holding back their best cards, which is a matter of course), but uh, I went and refreshed my memory and our relations with them are actually Positive, and Rapidly Increasing thanks to the Ship Sales.
We've got a lot of goodwill with them from that, the Warp Storm warning, and the Placebo + PROMETHEAN GAZE support. Something to keep in mind with the future.
(Shipwright's Grove is like, locked at Oathsworn or something? I forgot.)
A relationship akin to different programming languages. C++ vs Java vs [Insert Third Language].
Pretty interesting, all things considered. Shipwright's Grove is all comprehensible, but Van Zandt's technology tree is frankly
fascinating. Still frankly worrisome considering previous Hetalia mentions among others (AI bay bee), but as long as we keep on buffing the Iconoclasts...
But yeah, they're at minimum showing part of their hand -- they had other goodies to share with us (as seen with the DEldar bribes) but this is them presumably showing some of their core techs.
I assume it's also "this is an Anti-Chaos conference too" that's carrying some weight, but goddamn.
The Duchy is a bit trickier. I really want good Aethyrmetric stuff, it seems like a cool tree. But we just can't afford the highest level unless we get nothing else, and they have a lot of good shit. I'm not sure I want the Bellini protocol, it sounds like a sacrifical weapon like they used to use that would be... bad. But we can afford basically everything, the second-highest level of Aethyrmetric & the Dark Forest protocol - so:
I basically agree. I'm honestly pretty ambiguous on the Weapons in general, although maybe things might be insane and they're not restricted to
Naval weapons, which...
Uh, damn, okay. Bellini Protocol might be interesting in dealing with Daemonhosts or just on a throughline to dealing with Daemons too, albeit I'm not sure Daemons have a soul to in fact kill, and just more their narratives. I'd like more clarification on Bellini and Dark Forest -- I actually have no idea what Bellini is referencing.
Dark Forest is uh, more ominous considering the name.
But Linear Thought is just frankly fascinating as a phrase. Is it a Psyker discipline or something? Or is it just allowing normal folks to just do math so hard they can alter the universe anyways.
Frankly, I'm interested in how Aethyrmetrics synergize with Sacred Sands and such -- that's also explicitly connecting with geometry and mathematics too.
Van Zandt lootbox is super nice in general though, I'm glad that I managed to pull for Van Zandt diplomacy awhile ago. It's just very good synergy with our Automata, frankly our cogitators being what they are compared to our matsci and other research is pretty embarassing. I'm pretty excited to see what our next Turn might look like.
How in the Star Child's name did the Shipwright's Grove get their hands on that?
It's the canon Virus Bomb iirc, so they probably just needed to find an old exterminatus-grade fleet. And it's been a long, long time, so I figure it's pretty viable with enough dice thrown and how expansionist they are.
Is this really a good idea? We might fight the Duchy in the future so them having no knights at all would be better, right?
I'm honestly not too worried about it. While things have... definitely changed and they've gotten considerably juiced, Knights while very good lean more into our specialty than theirs. They don't have the as-reliable industrial capacity as us, nor as reliable doctrine nor units, since that's the advantage of iconoclast V.
Knight stuff is basically a battle of elites, versus their previous doctrine in Voxx Primus of imperium style chaff with some gigachad units stiffening their spine, and we basically have the advantage in an elite v. elite battle. We've had our knights training for a long long while, built them up, etc. And we also as Neablis noted, still have Questoris knights, much less Titans.
If we have to fight the Duchy, it'll suck ass, but frankly it won't be the centerpiece of pure ass, considering all the insane shit the Duchy has shown its hand on. Them having Knight-grade weapons will help them fight the Nurglites, which is what's important here since those are the ones that tend to have the biggest Daemon units (barring Slaaneshi Titan-grade threats).
Basically everything, except not giving the Duchy third-generation fighters, since they're unlikely to use them much and it would mostly give them better counters to us.
Also as a note, that's pretty interesting logic. I guess that's fair enough -- not enough anti-Chaos benefit, and just better doctrinal answers against us. Fair enough -- I think that the 4th gen are so much more of a paradigm shift and how much we've invested in better fighters that it's basically irrelevant, and it might be worth grabbing it to put them into debt anyways, but I'm too lazy to make a new plan so go wild.
If you do decide to put it in, frankly it might be worth it to risk it for the biscuit and try to either make this tech trade a regular thing, or even have collaborative research teams. I think we're already pretty decently close to the Grove, so exchanging point debt for that would be worth it IMO.
Now I'm really interested in what the Grove and Zandt are going to be buying from each other.
