Strange I was sure that I have post a vote before (I was going there to change it).
about the colony I think that the Durin has just told us that we will lose the first 'round' for the planet that we want.
I know that we are really full of actions to do, but why we are not using diplomatic action with the Quartok Protectorate? with just 3/10 they send us some good veterans to fight (well here in the planet where they now live and with a race they really really hate plus with a person that they hate too).
One thing that I know isn't a very good option now but would be nice going forward would be to make a psyker order focused specifically on Avernus wildlife research. We've got a LOT of stuff coming up that focuses there, and there could be some real tangential benefits in making it easier for the Mechanicus to study them too.
Side note: @Enjou
Could you consider changing the Tranth focus from the Graviton weapons to the KE weapons? Right now we're almost exclusively repairing old ships rather than building new ones, and incorporating anything learned there would probably require almost entirely new ship designs. Plus, the KE weapons are described as a major step up for one of our most effective weapon types—given our uncertainty over the major threat in fifty year's time I'd rather invest in something that will work fairly well against almost everything (and obscenely well against some things) rather than a weapon that is absolute hax when a moderately extensive list of prerequisites are fulfilled and dead weight otherwise. I'd hate to be heavily invested in the graviton stuff only to find out that we're facing Necrons 2.0: Electric Boogaloo.
Could you switch the upgrade actions in Administratum and Personal? The hive does not only take longer but is mofe expensive as well. Our aid adds another 10% on top as well.
I am strongly in favor of putting the DD on the armor. Thrant's collected boni are 129 for upgrading and to be viable for a crit it must be 75 higher than the base chance and over 100%. Without DD the result needs to be 165 (base chance dropped from 20% for recon to 10% for Ace). With the DD the crit chance goes from 74% to 94%.
I'm going to ask this again as I did every single time you've brought this up - why do we need their assistance settling Het? There is nothing special about Het that should require their assistance, nor is there any reason we should be bringing them into our system. The one and only complication with settling Het is that it would require its own orbital defenses, and if we need more Promethium we can still settle more Forge Cities on that one moon that is rich in Promethium without adding that problem - the result of our last refinery expansion even said we could found more cities there.
Unless @Durin says there's some need for their help when it comes time for us to actually want to do this, I don't think we should be looking to expand to Het right now.
Well, I guess I can give you the same answer I've given you every single time before:
1: Why shouldn't we ask Nilfheim for assistance? Sure we can do it ourselves, but in the Nilfheim we have people who are already experts at, and used to living on an Ice World mining Promethium. Why shouldn't we seek to exploit their knowledge and experience?
2: It allows us an easy way to develop a closer relationship with Nilfheim, which has always been a challenge because of their isolationism.
3: Hopefully it will open the door for eventually gaining access to some more of the knowledge and information that they have. Isn't that something we've all been interested in?
4: Hopefully it will give us a small Advanced Material production capability that is not dependent on the Mechanicus. The worlds that can do this are Muspelheim, Svartalfheim, and Nilfheim. Why shouldn't we want that?
5: It allows for faster expansion inside the Helheim system without diverting population away from the Avernus primary world. Why shouldn't we seek that?
Heck, the bigger question isn't what we get out of it, it's what Nilfheim will get out of it.
Also, I listed all these things both in the plan itself, and in my suggestion of it as one of the options for our next major Administrative project, back in my long term goals analysis post a couple days ago. The one you never commented on. I suggested four different possible things to do with our Administrative actions. Cooperation with Nilfheim on settling Het was the fourth idea I listed, and the only one that got any positive comments. So naturally it's what I was going to suggest doing.
Additionally, the additional orbital defenses are a minor obstacle at best. We are working on the last large shipyard in our plan, and after this turn I believe we only need one more Advanced Orbital Defense Stations action and we will have finished all the planned defenses. To build defenses for Het would only require 2x Build Advanced Orbital Weapons Platforms, 2x Build Advanced Heavy Orbital Weapons Platforms, and 3x Advanced Orbital Defense Station actions. With a yearly cost of less than 10,000 Advanced Material.
Why shouldn't we do it? It's an easy expansion that makes use of our already existing defense fleet. Furthermore, the other major Void actions we want to be doing are all Construction actions and so do not compete with defense building actions.
Now if you have something else you think is more important to spend actions on that's fine, I'd like to hear the ideas. That's why I brought it up a couple days ago before the new turn was posted. Since it seemed sensible to think about things from a longer 50 year plan rather than just 5 year turns.
I mean, I'm willing to change if people don't want to do it. I would however like it if people can look at our plans for the next 40 years and make some long term goals. Colonizing the last major planetary body in the Helhiem system seems like a sensible goal to me. (Also, side note that durin actually said there was not a further option to expand Promethium mining on the moons).
One of the other options I suggested was expansion to the Taiga north of the Spine.
In fact let me just copy the section in question over here for further review:
Next up is upgrading our city defenses.
I think we have 1 more major city action (6 years), and five Small Hive actions (40 years), plus Dis (12 years) for a total of 58 action years in administration. Considering that we effectively have four slots (since Thaddeus can work on these) I think we are pretty good in terms of space. (Total of 200 action years available in Admin).
Additional things to consider - perhaps we ought to consider the Azure Isle railways after all. Most external threats have ignored the Azure Isles, this new threat might not. That would be an additional 18 years of actions. Plus it might create alternate connections to Elysium.
Duat does not have a small hive, we probably want to establish one there, that will be another 10 years of administration actions.
Educational Review is a 1 years action with a surprising long term payoff, might be worth using as a spacer in Admin actions to get expedites at the right spot.
What else can we do with the remaining administrative actions? We probably have 100 years left or so.
Well the first option is to focus on continuing to improve our defenses, possibly with re-founding the destroyed cities (Blacktyde, The Bayou). But we'd need to brainstorm some ideas here. How exactly can we improve the defenses? For example, would some kind of sally port outside the cities be helpful? I'm thinking of something like a tunnel and an exit allowing a large sally force to attack the enemy from the rear and then retreat back to the cites? Might only be applicable in terrain that allows the concealment of the sally port (like Lindon or the Spine, maybe the Everglades). Potentially new Kinetic Weapons or Gravitron Weapons could be useful and adapted from the ship based weapons to city based? Might depend on what we learn about the nature of the coming threat.
Maybe some kind of forward defenses (infantry bunkers?) that are expected to be overrun (so collapsible tunnels allowing the defenders to retreat), but allow us to impose a cost on approaching armies setting up a siege. Disposable Turbo-Laser Destructors? (Since we got the cheap versions). Adding comm jamming equipment? Heck, maybe we should set up a permanent minefield around each city. It's not like people are taking picnics out there. I don't know, we need to brainstorm things like that.
The second option is to make cities bigger. We could probably expand two major cities in each region into a Small Hive. That would give each region three large hives. Small hives also have some defensive advantages, particularly against orbital bombardment. They also simply have more militia and so are harder targets in an invasion.
There are also variations on the first and second options. For example, maybe expand all the cities in the Azure Isles into Small Hives. This region has reached capacity, and they are the most isolated cities.
The third option is the most aggressive option. We could try to expand to another region. The main advantage we gain from this is forcing the enemy to spread out their forces. If the new region is connected to the rest of Avernus cities we would also still be able to use railway lines to move our forces around to were they are needed the most. Assuming we would have to wait until after the next campaign against the Orks is finished we are probably looking at 35 years to pull this off.
This would require at least around 15 years of military actions (probably more, but overlapping actions in the same 15 year period), followed by at least 16 years of city founding (assuming 6 cities, this would be 48 action years worth, but all overlapping). Additionally around 10 or so of the military and administration actions would overlap. That would gives ~15 years of further development to put in the railway and improve any defenses. So we could get it done before the 50 year warning is up. But that would tend to assume that we have no other suddenly needed actions within that time period). If we need to spend any administrative actions on colonization this is probably not viable.
Of the possible regions to settle, Eta is probably too big to expand to in the time we have, and Kappa is across an ocean, so despite the attraction of meeting the lizardmen, it would be cut off from the rest of Avernus settlements. That leaves region Theta, a frozen forest and taiga. It would also expand our defenses northward, possibly allowing the creation of alternate rail routes connecting Elysium to the rest of Avernite settlements and making it so Casarrondo isn't as exposed on our northern fringe.
The fourth option would be to try and entice Nilfheim into a cooperative settlement of Het (Avernus V, the ice world). Since they are also a major producer of advanced material this is a possible thing to do, if the advance material output of Het was sufficient to offset the AM maintenance cost of the defenses. This would involve increased void actions to build more defenses, in addition to admin actions. However it has an advantage over the area expansion in that it can be begun as soon as Nilfheim agrees, and doesn't have the wildlife risks. It might also provide some tactical advantage in void combat having multiple strongholds in space, allowing for alternate threats to an invading fleet.
Building the void defenses for Het would take about 34 Void action years to match our current defenses in other locations. To reach our current goals though it would be more like 50 action years. So doable. (Since we have two non-construction void slots, plus our Personal Attention actions.)
Honestly, I think it may be best to hold out for a better location. With Vanaheim going for the best location other than Danaan and Midgard going for the likely Agri-world, we may just want to wait until the next Ork domain so we can get something much nicer since both Vanaheim and Midgard would be unable to outbid us for it. Or a Death World, if there's one available.
1: I said that myself two days ago. However, we already committed to making a bid with Muspelheim.
2: Durin just said it's going to happen automatically without an action, and that it will fail. So it will fail, but it's still good as it puts a marker out there and should position us to get first pick next round.
Removed the asking Niflheim to help with colonizing Het, both because we shouldn't need the help and because we're not at a point where we need to colonize Het. Exchanged it for investigating the relationship between Muspelheim and Niflheim.
Edited the Siren trade text for more specifics/clarity.
I don't think that the edits to the Siren plan are good, since it narrows what we are offering and what we are asking for. Nor is there any need to change it, since the text I used was word for word what durin approved: Sirens Trade (Offer all Avernus creatures in the 'animals' category that we can capture)
The way the actual action is written it sounds like we make an offer to the Sirens and then we find out what they are willing to offer us in exchange.
Well, durin specifically said that Tranth can improve the stealth ability on the Recon armor, and since that is the armor most likely to be using stealth it seemed the most important one to upgrade.
Overall all though these are minor differences in our plans. So I'm actually quite pleased.
@Enjou, @Elder Haman, maybe you'll want to do Sound Out to find out how various polities would react to us trading animals in exchange for xenos sorcery? This seems particularly pertinent in the case of the Inquisition, but also for other polities like Byzantium and Vanaheim.
Not really worried about it since we already did it. We've already adapted Siren psyker abilities (it's the source for Songweaving). We also already traded them luxuries for knowledge. It's only when implementing new knowledge, or if we traded them something like our psyker abilities that we would need to sound out the rest of the Trust.
Het is Avernus V, the last planet inside our planetary system (we are on Avernus II, the primary planet), an ice world with lots of Promethium (essentially like Nilfheim in environment). Het was actually a temporary name I suggested back when naming the moons (around Avernus IV a gas giant), and then durin just adopted it.
Based on the name, I'm guessing Alexandria is on the river delta, probably on or near the coast.
There's a difference between psyker powers and sorcery. Their natural abilities - the songweaving - count as psyker powers, not sorcery. Their runes, on the other hand, count as sorcery.
Again, I don't think we need to sound out this since we've already done this before. If we were trading them psyker knowledge then we'd definately need to sound the Trust out about that.
One thing that I know isn't a very good option now but would be nice going forward would be to make a psyker order focused specifically on Avernus wildlife research. We've got a LOT of stuff coming up that focuses there, and there could be some real tangential benefits in making it easier for the Mechanicus to study them too.
Side note: @Enjou
Could you consider changing the Tranth focus from the Graviton weapons to the KE weapons? Right now we're almost exclusively repairing old ships rather than building new ones, and incorporating anything learned there would probably require almost entirely new ship designs. Plus, the KE weapons are described as a major step up for one of our most effective weapon types—given our uncertainty over the major threat in fifty year's time I'd rather invest in something that will work fairly well against almost everything (and obscenely well against some things) rather than a weapon that is absolute hax when a moderately extensive list of prerequisites are fulfilled and dead weight otherwise. I'd hate to be heavily invested in the graviton stuff only to find out that we're facing Necrons 2.0: Electric Boogaloo.
I agree that an Order focused on Wildlife research is a good idea. However, I think that Songs of War, and Fleet wards are more urgent...
As for the Graviton vs KE weapons, I picked the Graviton to go first because we can pretty reliably get both it and the KE within 20 years, but if we decide we want the Graviton Array (if the threat makes us want to do that instead of KE) then we definitely want to get the Graviton Weapons first.
Though I suppose that is only a minor optimization, and doing the KE first wouldn't be the end of the world.
There is also the aspect that by doing the Graviton Weapons now (which will probably require a 2nd attempt) it means there will probably be a gap of 12 years without the need for a Cheating action, allowing Ridcully to do something longer term like founding a Divination Psyker Order (since apparently having Ridcully do it instead of Xavier gives some bonuses) or even working on Immaterial Resonance (a 10 year action that could reveal something really interesting).
There's a difference between psyker powers and sorcery. Their natural abilities - the songweaving - count as psyker powers, not sorcery. Their runes, on the other hand, count as sorcery.
No it's not. Sorcery is literally having gods/daemons do things for you in exchange for worship/sacrifice/etc., siren runes are still very much a psyker ability, abeit an exotic one.
When ever it turns up how it always seems to work is that Psyker powers are kinda like a prewritten code that a psyker uses, but usually finds hard to change, where as sorcery seems to be take warp energy and direct it in any way you want to if you have will/power.
Well, I guess I can give you the same answer I've given you every single time before:
1: Why shouldn't we ask Nilfheim for assistance? Sure we can do it ourselves, but in the Nilfheim we have people who are already experts at, and used to living on an Ice World mining Promethium. Why shouldn't we seek to exploit their knowledge and experience?
2: It allows us an easy way to develop a closer relationship with Nilfheim, which has always been a challenge because of their isolationism.
3: Hopefully it will open the door for eventually gaining access to some more of the knowledge and information that they have. Isn't that something we've all been interested in?
4: Hopefully it will give us a small Advanced Material production capability that is not dependent on the Mechanicus. The worlds that can do this are Muspelheim, Svartalfheim, and Nilfheim. Why shouldn't we want that?
5: It allows for faster expansion inside the Helheim system without diverting population away from the Avernus primary world. Why shouldn't we seek that?
Heck, the bigger question isn't what we get out of it, it's what Nilfheim will get out of it.
Also, I listed all these things both in the plan itself, and in my suggestion of it as one of the options for our next major Administrative project, back in my long term goals analysis post a couple days ago. The one you never commented on. I suggested four different possible things to do with our Administrative actions. Cooperation with Nilfheim on settling Het was the fourth idea I listed, and the only one that got any positive comments. So naturally it's what I was going to suggest doing.
Additionally, the additional orbital defenses are a minor obstacle at best. We are working on the last large shipyard in our plan, and after this turn I believe we only need one more Advanced Orbital Defense Stations action and we will have finished all the planned defenses. To build defenses for Het would only require 2x Build Advanced Orbital Weapons Platforms, 2x Build Advanced Heavy Orbital Weapons Platforms, and 3x Advanced Orbital Defense Station actions. With a yearly cost of less than 10,000 Advanced Material.
Why shouldn't we do it? It's an easy expansion that makes use of our already existing defense fleet. Furthermore, the other major Void actions we want to be doing are all Construction actions and so do not compete with defense building actions.
Now if you have something else you think is more important to spend actions on that's fine, I'd like to hear the ideas. That's why I brought it up a couple days ago before the new turn was posted. Since it seemed sensible to think about things from a longer 50 year plan rather than just 5 year turns.
I mean, I'm willing to change if people don't want to do it. I would however like it if people can look at our plans for the next 40 years and make some long term goals. Colonizing the last major planetary body in the Helhiem system seems like a sensible goal to me. (Also, side note that durin actually said there was not a further option to expand Promethium mining on the moons).
One of the other options I suggested was expansion to the Taiga north of the Spine.
In fact let me just copy the section in question over here for further review:
Next up is upgrading our city defenses.
I think we have 1 more major city action (6 years), and five Small Hive actions (40 years), plus Dis (12 years) for a total of 58 action years in administration. Considering that we effectively have four slots (since Thaddeus can work on these) I think we are pretty good in terms of space. (Total of 200 action years available in Admin).
Additional things to consider - perhaps we ought to consider the Azure Isle railways after all. Most external threats have ignored the Azure Isles, this new threat might not. That would be an additional 18 years of actions. Plus it might create alternate connections to Elysium.
Duat does not have a small hive, we probably want to establish one there, that will be another 10 years of administration actions.
Educational Review is a 1 years action with a surprising long term payoff, might be worth using as a spacer in Admin actions to get expedites at the right spot.
What else can we do with the remaining administrative actions? We probably have 100 years left or so.
Well the first option is to focus on continuing to improve our defenses, possibly with re-founding the destroyed cities (Blacktyde, The Bayou). But we'd need to brainstorm some ideas here. How exactly can we improve the defenses? For example, would some kind of sally port outside the cities be helpful? I'm thinking of something like a tunnel and an exit allowing a large sally force to attack the enemy from the rear and then retreat back to the cites? Might only be applicable in terrain that allows the concealment of the sally port (like Lindon or the Spine, maybe the Everglades). Potentially new Kinetic Weapons or Gravitron Weapons could be useful and adapted from the ship based weapons to city based? Might depend on what we learn about the nature of the coming threat.
Maybe some kind of forward defenses (infantry bunkers?) that are expected to be overrun (so collapsible tunnels allowing the defenders to retreat), but allow us to impose a cost on approaching armies setting up a siege. Disposable Turbo-Laser Destructors? (Since we got the cheap versions). Adding comm jamming equipment? Heck, maybe we should set up a permanent minefield around each city. It's not like people are taking picnics out there. I don't know, we need to brainstorm things like that.
The second option is to make cities bigger. We could probably expand two major cities in each region into a Small Hive. That would give each region three large hives. Small hives also have some defensive advantages, particularly against orbital bombardment. They also simply have more militia and so are harder targets in an invasion.
There are also variations on the first and second options. For example, maybe expand all the cities in the Azure Isles into Small Hives. This region has reached capacity, and they are the most isolated cities.
The third option is the most aggressive option. We could try to expand to another region. The main advantage we gain from this is forcing the enemy to spread out their forces. If the new region is connected to the rest of Avernus cities we would also still be able to use railway lines to move our forces around to were they are needed the most. Assuming we would have to wait until after the next campaign against the Orks is finished we are probably looking at 35 years to pull this off.
This would require at least around 15 years of military actions (probably more, but overlapping actions in the same 15 year period), followed by at least 16 years of city founding (assuming 6 cities, this would be 48 action years worth, but all overlapping). Additionally around 10 or so of the military and administration actions would overlap. That would gives ~15 years of further development to put in the railway and improve any defenses. So we could get it done before the 50 year warning is up. But that would tend to assume that we have no other suddenly needed actions within that time period). If we need to spend any administrative actions on colonization this is probably not viable.
Of the possible regions to settle, Eta is probably too big to expand to in the time we have, and Kappa is across an ocean, so despite the attraction of meeting the lizardmen, it would be cut off from the rest of Avernus settlements. That leaves region Theta, a frozen forest and taiga. It would also expand our defenses northward, possibly allowing the creation of alternate rail routes connecting Elysium to the rest of Avernite settlements and making it so Casarrondo isn't as exposed on our northern fringe.
The fourth option would be to try and entice Nilfheim into a cooperative settlement of Het (Avernus V, the ice world). Since they are also a major producer of advanced material this is a possible thing to do, if the advance material output of Het was sufficient to offset the AM maintenance cost of the defenses. This would involve increased void actions to build more defenses, in addition to admin actions. However it has an advantage over the area expansion in that it can be begun as soon as Nilfheim agrees, and doesn't have the wildlife risks. It might also provide some tactical advantage in void combat having multiple strongholds in space, allowing for alternate threats to an invading fleet.
Building the void defenses for Het would take about 34 Void action years to match our current defenses in other locations. To reach our current goals though it would be more like 50 action years. So doable. (Since we have two non-construction void slots, plus our Personal Attention actions.)
1: I said that myself two days ago. However, we already committed to making a bid with Muspelheim.
2: Durin just said it's going to happen automatically without an action, and that it will fail. So it will fail, but it's still good as it puts a marker out there and should position us to get first pick next round.
I don't think that the edits to the Siren plan are good, since it narrows what we are offering and what we are asking for. Nor is there any need to change it, since the text I used was word for word what durin approved: Sirens Trade (Offer all Avernus creatures in the 'animals' category that we can capture)
The way the actual action is written it sounds like we make an offer to the Sirens and then we find out what they are willing to offer us in exchange.
Well, durin specifically said that Tranth can improve the stealth ability on the Recon armor, and since that is the armor most likely to be using stealth it seemed the most important one to upgrade.
Overall all though these are minor differences in our plans. So I'm actually quite pleased.
Not really worried about it since we already did it. We've already adapted Siren psyker abilities (it's the source for Songweaving). We also already traded them luxuries for knowledge. It's only when implementing new knowledge, or if we traded them something like our psyker abilities that we would need to sound out the rest of the Trust.
Het is Avernus V, the last planet inside our planetary system (we are on Avernus II, the primary planet), an ice world with lots of Promethium (essentially like Nilfheim in environment). Het was actually a temporary name I suggested back when naming the moons (around Avernus IV a gas giant), and then durin just adopted it.
Based on the name, I'm guessing Alexandria is on the river delta, probably on or near the coast.
it is a grey area
dealing with warp entities in any way is sorcery
pure will based powers are psychic
ritual based powers fall in between, wards and choirs are accepted, others not so much. it really depends and is a grey area in universe as well
1) Durin already okayed the old wording.
2) The trade isn't proposing a trade (despite the title Durin gives the action). It is asking whether they regard what we are offering as worth trading for.
Also, I listed all these things both in the plan itself, and in my suggestion of it as one of the options for our next major Administrative project, back in my long term goals analysis post a couple days ago. The one you never commented on. I suggested four different possible things to do with our Administrative actions. Cooperation with Nilfheim on settling Het was the fourth idea I listed, and the only one that got any positive comments. So naturally it's what I was going to suggest doing.
I never commented on it because it was a big post and I've been busy and didn't have time to go through it. Doesn't help that they've blocked SV at work, limiting my time to make comments. But looking over your projects...
1. I'm for refounding our lost cities, and have been for a while. The Bayou in particular has been a landing zone for Orks and I see no reason to allow that gap in the Everglades to continue to exist. As to the rest of your suggested defense expansions in that regard, I can't comment on whether they'd be good ideas or not.
2. Adding a few hives would be fine by me, if our advisors recommend it.
3. Given we've just finished exploring Duat, I'd be fine with exploring a new area.
4. No offense, but getting Niflheim to help with settling Het has always seemed like a pet project of yours to me. I'm really not seeing the benefits as being as great as you're saying, for us or them. Given Niflheim has a lot of secrets, I doubt they'd want to settle in our system given that it would make it easier for those secrets to be exposed. Niflheim also still has plenty of room to expand on their own world apparently, and given their isolationism and lack of enthusiasm to found a new colony at this time this certainly doesn't seem like the time to ask anyways. Stretching our defensive fleet between more locations also seems inadvisable if we're preparing to deal with a new threat. And in general, I'd prefer to just keep building more Forge Cities on the moons we're currently building on so long as we're able to do that.
