Second off, a few questions relating to that;
- Is the Trade Center Comms Augment meant to provide a free Trade every downtime or something? Because while that's entirely legal, I will point out that you guys are struggling to figure out things to do with certain other free-action-augs' free actions, and the more free actions you have, the more bloated these plans tend to become. Again, it's a totally valid option to research, I'm just curious if you guys really *need* it.
- What improvements are you looking for from the "UV Anti-Armour Lasers"? Better range (max or brackets)? Higher rate of fire? Stronger output? A little of everything?
- What sort of computer stuff/blueprints/intact gear are you hoping to find from Kitsap? Just so I have an idea what to give you guys if you roll well enough.
1. Might not be necessary, but I suspect Trade is going to end up being a really,
really frequent aspect of planning.
2. Pretty much the "little bit of everything", though if I had to choose, range would probably be high on that list, especially if max range became a multiple of five. Makes life a lot easier. I think I was probably only considering damage as a likely change at the time, or at least an effective mirroring of the previous upgrade to UV. But I will happily take more if it's on offer.
3. I think I outlined some of that in the priorities lists, but I'm fairly sure I was hoping for Missile subs and Aircraft Carriers on the high end for blueprints/hulls when I wrote it, though I guess I would be alright with other ship hulls, or even aircraft-related stuff. The reward could be a flat-out new unit for us to build, or just a research token. I'd probably be okay with either, even if the latter would add to our reserve of them just as I've been actively trimming said reserve down. Thinking really creatively, I suppose biueprints might also take the form of an upgrade for one of our pieces of gear that we don't have to research, like better missile range or higher accuracy or what have you.
Intact gear beyond hulls would be primarily be intact ship construction or maintenance gear, or facilities we can swipe for our own use. Bangor has historically been a major ammunition depot, though I'm not clear on whether this remains the case for anything other than nuclear weapons, or how useful that ammo would be for us. Bremerton, aside from being a massive fuel depot and a place to store mothballed ships, handles Aircraft Carriers, which don't tend to mount too many weapons. Aside from maybe some novel warhead or bomb designs, I really wouldn't expect to find much at either base. Maybe some AA turrets for the carriers, but they don't tend to have all that much in the way of firepower. Though I suppose they might have railguns, since those are being considered for cruise missile AA.
Beyond that, I guess any computer systems that might have useful classified information or that can aid in design would be nice. By the former, I mean secret government documents that might tell us about other facilities or proposed projects, military-grade encryption/decryption software for decrypting classified files or encrypting our own comms, that sort of thing.
And third... a few points/questions on other game things;
- If you guys want to build up more for the actual hunt, I'd be cool with outright having your next Weekly Mission be "go forth and besiege Tara's stronghold". After all, my current plan is to switch up what sort of Missions you get, and the fight with Tara would pretty much be in line with the sort of fight normally seen during a Weekly Mission (just due to the sheer amount of numbers). It'd also let you repair and recover more thoroughly afterwards, should you get beaten up.
- If you can't think up something to do with a free action, it's perfectly fine to just have that augment take a Downtime off and not do anything. You guys don't have to optimize the hell out of everything-- you're not really on an in-game timer (well, not on a short-term one, at least). Even the upcoming "Oblivion Bay 2, Electric Boogaloo" date is merely the earliest date by which KRAUN can support you, should you request it for the mission, rather than a "KRAUN's definitely going by this day, so you'd better be ready to move out by then". Again, I'm not trying to stop you, just letting you know that there's not a big rush.
Totally up for taking on Tara as this week's fight, unless someone has a good reason for us not to. Hunts make turns last for ages anyway, so I'm down with avoiding that. I'll have to put some thought into what might go in place of those Hunt actions, but I'm sure there's
something I wanted to get done that I deferred in place of the urgent Hunt.
As for the optimization thing...that might at least partially be because I've been doing our Downtime plans for a while, and I'm an inveterate optimizer (at least when I vaguely enjoy it), to the point of mild insanity. You would not believe the bizarre ways I end up playing video games in the name of optimization, from poisoning myself every night in Rune Factory 4, to having more money and resources than I could ever conceivably spend in Skyrim, yet still obsessively clearing every dungeon of any useful resource, to trapping bow units in Three Houses and making non-story battles take 99 turns purely to level Class exp, I'm prone to doing weird sh*t for quite often only minimal gain, because I enjoy it. It has a tendency to majorly inflate my play time for any given progression marker, but I don't care, I'm having fun.
This particular game is, however, a multiplayer one. I tend make an effort to be less insane for those, so if it's a problem for you, I'm willing to tone it down. But it's not that much more inconvenient for me, and I kinda enjoy figuring out how I'm going to use each Augment. Honestly, it's rarely that much of a struggle, beyond maybe the Research ones. If anything, I have more of a problem with main Actions.
That said, I think you're right to say I, specifically, need to take a breath and slow down on the prep work, honestly. I was definitely treating the date when KRAUN would be ready as D-Day, rather than the beginning of the window for D-Day. I could definitely stand to lighten up when it comes to research and building stuff isn't either neutral or beneficial to that specific end. This is sort of why I'd like more input from the rest of you guys, honestly. I get carried away with self-assigned goals pretty regularly, so I really do sometimes need to have a wake-up call.
I'm not gonna lock in the plan just yet, in case A) someone wants to suggest a new plan and/or B) Nixeu wants to update his plan, but hopefully you lot still have interest in this game.
If no one has any objections to making Tara our mission this week, I'll be happy to replace those reserved Actions with some other project. I'll need a bit to get my brain back into gear, but that probably won't take too long. Still, probably not getting a full rework within the next 12 hours. But then, I'd probably wait that long for people's input on the subject regardless of whether or not I needed that time get back into the swing of things.
On a related note, if anyone else has any suggestions for those Actions, or even if someone else wants to try their hand at Downtime planning, I'm happy to help. I mostly seem to have become the planner because I keep notes about the game and what people have discussed, and enjoy the process of vote crafting. If someone else wants to help out or do the task, that's fine by me. I'd honestly prefer more input from you guys on my plans anyway, if only so I don't feel like i'm hijacking the game or something.
