Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

[Glau]

And they are currently rebuilding a lot of housing, because the world has been subject to orbital bombardment and chaos cruelty-for-cruelty's-sake shenanigans anywhere that's not Aevon.

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Not sure this is actually true- we haven't looked at the planet really yet. And regardless, a million build points of housing is a very large rock to lift. It gets even worse if we start thinking about the other planets we are just going to visit in passing.

Faith is cheap. And we aren't going to know how well it works until we do it, but I'm doubtful 'it only barely works and then only for the most dedicated' would cover more than a poor success.

 

[DragonParadox]

Not sure this is actually true- we haven't looked at the planet really yet. And regardless, a million build points of housing is a very large rock to lift. It gets even worse if we start thinking about the other planets we are just going to visit in passing.

Faith is cheap. And we aren't going to know how well it works until we do it, but I'm doubtful 'it only barely works and then only for the most dedicated' would cover more than a poor success.

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I mean it barely works for the IoM and they have been doing it for between five and ten thousand years.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Not sure this is actually true- we haven't looked at the planet really yet. And regardless, a million build points of housing is a very large rock to lift. It gets even worse if we start thinking about the other planets we are just going to visit in passing.

Faith is cheap. And we aren't going to know how well it works until we do it, but I'm doubtful 'it only barely works and then only for the most dedicated' would cover more than a poor success.

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This still isn't a dichotomy. I am still advocating for doing both, securing denva is just really important.

And as DP says, faith is a better-than-nothing defense. It's not a sensor to discover chaos activity or cultists, it's not something that rules out something has been corrupted, and it definitely isn't something that preserves opsec.

SSDIPS is pretty clear. Free shielding. Houses built, free shielding. Ultra-Mass housing construction is something that can be done by 20th century means, nevermind the whack-ass factories we've got. It's also the most reasonable way by which we can make shielded trade goods at scale of any kind, since you bring up worlds other than Denva.

You're not going to be able to get an alliance with an eldar faction by selling faith, after all.

Fair about the scope of reconstruction being unclear? We'll just have to wait and see on that.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

Out of curiosity, do we have rules for building housing and such into otherwise Vita/AI/OMC operated ships and platforms? I know we've got blueprints for ground based and orbital cities, and the blueprint design process has an option for living space, but the first seem awfully fragile without any specifically included defenses and the second seems incompatible with Vita/AI/OMC control on top of not offering any specific numbers for population supported.

We may need to research larger defense platforms before it becomes an option, but I'd like to build a base to house the expanding Cogitare and give them somewhere to operate Aetherion from at some point, and I can imagine it may be useful to have passenger capacity if not outright passenger ships for moving large numbers of people between systems at some point. Although for the latter, maybe troop bays can serve for that, idk.

 

[Angle]

I mean it barely works for the IoM and they have been doing it for between five and ten thousand years.

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A lot of things barely work for the IoM that they've been doing for thousands of years.

 

[Aineko]

...I really think the level of 'we must shore up Denva against Chaos' is a bit misguided.

Can they use it? Yes, for sure, the Curio Cabinet was a great pickup.

Is it the biggest problem that we should be bending great effort to? Dubious. They're neither helpless in covert actions nor socially brittle. They're well set to win this without further help - which can't be said for the next time a cruiser shows up without Vita in system. Let alone when threats start moving in units larger than lone cruisers.


Though we'll see when the chapter lands, maybe there's a pressing need or great opportunity.

 

[Prime 2.0]

...I really think the level of 'we must shore up Denva against Chaos' is a bit misguided.

Can they use it? Yes, for sure, the Curio Cabinet was a great pickup.

Is it the biggest problem that we should be bending great effort to? Dubious. They're neither helpless in covert actions nor socially brittle. They're well set to win this without further help - which can't be said for the next time a cruiser shows up without Vita in system. Let alone when threats start moving in units larger than lone cruisers.


Though we'll see when the chapter lands, maybe there's a pressing need or great opportunity.

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It's less about whether they'll win this - I agree, they will - but instead how soon we'll be able to trust them implicitly with technology and secrets that can be abused, because until the infiltration problem is dealt with, we cannot.

We got lucky that the war-band stayed in-system and that their remnants are now stranded here - but if they can get out on denvan ships once they have warp travel, dissemination of our tech suddenly becomes their main way to improve their lives.

That SSDIPS is also a major leap for our own technology and BP efficiency should also not be underestimated - and it's arguably a necessary step towards being able to use psy shields as a trade good, the others being the follow-on from machine-spirit controlled psy shields that lets them regenerate, and maybe the second psy shield efficiency tech.

Back on ascalon, you may recall there were lots of people interested in selling our psy shields to them - and while there were a number of doable challenges with that, the two most important were thus:

Archaeotech that takes damage faster than it can be repaired is soon to be broken archaeotech, and psy shields are wildly more expensive relative to their value compared to other goods we can provide.

If we don't solve those two problems, we can't sell psy shields, even though they're one of our most well developed technologies providing a capability almost nobody has.

And we really, really want to be able to sell that. Diplomacy and trade with other factions is a way to grow much, much faster than we are now, something we need since we've been punched in the gut three times now with our preparations for the big boys waking up and arriving to fight over the sector with us in the crossfire.


But... yeah, the watchword remains "wait and see". W only rolled a normal success on cultist cleanup though, so I expect we're not all there yet - it remains the case that eradicating chaos influence from a world is an insane accomplishment and we probably still need to help.

What form that help takes? Well. Yeah, I suppose we'll find out.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

I think we have more urgent things than better psy-shields, including the things I outlined in my research plan, but I also think the next big push on psy-shielding tech should probably go something like...

-[] Psychic Shielding Reliability (100 RP) (This is the tech that makes tripwires reliable, our regular psy-shielding is already reliable)
-[] Machine Spirit Chaos resistance (75 RP)
-[] Machine Spirit-controlled Psychic Shields (50 RP)
-[] Self-Repairing Psychic Shields (???)
-[] Triple Nested Psychic shielding (200 RP)
-[] Tiny Psychic shielding (400 RP)
-[] Advanced Cognition Filter (150 RP)
-[] Companion Cogitators (350 RP)
-[] Understanding Mutations (150 RP)
-[] Chaos Corruption Cognitive Intervention (400 RP)

At which point we would have the theoretical ability to design a self-repairing psychic shield into an amulet or something, or just as part of a new implant, which would pair with a cognition-filter implant to let that implant know when something is warp-y and needs to be filtered, and would then have the ability to actively detect and reverse corruption.

That would give us the ability to make people more-or-less proof against chaos.

 

[Aineko]

I don't think Denva is going to be losing their starships to Chaos infiltrators any time soon. I do not agree that there's any tech we have that's too dangerous for Denva to have. (Though I would avoid sharing, for instance, daemon-summoning instructions if we researched daemonology.)

That SSDIPS is also a major leap for our own technology and BP efficiency should also not be underestimated - and it's arguably a necessary step towards being able to use psy shields as a trade good, the others being the follow-on from machine-spirit controlled psy shields that lets them regenerate, and maybe the second psy shield efficiency tech.

Back on ascalon, you may recall there were lots of people interested in selling our psy shields to them - and while there were a number of doable challenges with that, the two most important were thus:

Archaeotech that takes damage faster than it can be repaired is soon to be broken archaeotech, and psy shields are wildly more expensive relative to their value compared to other goods we can provide.

If we don't solve those two problems, we can't sell psy shields, even though they're one of our most well developed technologies providing a capability almost nobody has.

And we really, really want to be able to sell that. Diplomacy and trade with other factions is a way to grow much, much faster than we are now, something we need since we've been punched in the gut three times now with our preparations for the big boys waking up and arriving to fight over the sector with us in the crossfire.

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I don't recall the second one? And I think we've improved the shields since. But psy shields (with the breakage aspect resolved, that is) are enormously valuable to chaos-fearing sorts. At least, if they believe they do what they actually do.

Of course, like most Vita trade goods, they're elite goods that won't directly benefit most people.

Though really I would hesitate to worry about trade goods when we currently have zero candidates to trade with that way. (Half of one if you count the Space Marine pocket empire, but we can't realistically make contact with them by choice with our current navigation limits.)

 

[Haganeko]

That was never going to happen. I warned repeatedly that it was never going to happen. It's plainly obvious that Denva doesn't have a research body to its name.

We need to finish the basic industrial techs yesterday, not in a hundred years of handing down OMC games. These are our essential techs. Research any of them before the next time we fall into a crisis or get distracted for realtime weeks with one of a million planets:

Spoiler

-[] Grand Cruisers (400 RP)
-[] Streamlined ship design (100 RP)

-[] Large-scale Void Manufacturing (100 RP)
-[] Abacus Manufacturing (100 RP)

-[] Examine the Dark Eldar Craft (150 RP)

-[] Void Shield Discounts (300 RP)

-[] Chaos Space Marine Armor Investigation (100 RP)
-[] Advanced Materials (250 RP)
-[] Heavy Armor Production Line (100 RP)
-[] Armor Device Integration (200 RP)

-[] Necron Initial Investigations (200 RP)

-[] Combat Bot Melee Combat (150 RP)
-[] Really good Robotics: (600 RP)

-[] Intelligence Coding (400 RP)

-[] Alternative Shielding Meanings (150 RP)
-[] Psychic Shield Tuning (200 RP)

-[] Empathy at Range (200 RP)
-[] Yelling into the Warp (175 RP)
-[] Vortex Weapons (250 RP)
-[] Reliable Gellar Fields (300 RP)
-[] Demonology (150 RP)
-[] Immaterium Understanding (225 RP)
-[] Improved Void Abacus (125 RP)

-[] Basic Psychic Suppression Devices (150 RP)
-[] Complex Psytech Implants (250 RP)
-[] Psychic Materials (300 RP)

-[] Dark Eldar Weaponry (150 RP)
-[] Gravity Weapons (200 RP)
-[] The Biggest Boom (150 RP)
-[] Superconductive Shenanigans (50 RP)
-[] Miniaturized antigrav (50 RP)
-[] High-energy Physics (300 RP)
-[] Better Sensors are just Physics (150 RP)

-[] Machine Spirit Combat Bot Flexibility (250 RP)
-[] Independent Manufactories (400 RP)
-[] Machine Spirit Shipboard Manufactories (75 RP)
-[] Basic Automated Manufactories (150 RP)
-[] Machine Spirit Ship Design Improvements (200 RP
-[] Machine Spirit Hallucinations (300 RP)

-[] Complex genetic enhancement (150 RP)
-[] Psyker genetics (300 RP)
-[] Understanding Mutations (150 RP)
-[] That's two levels of augmentation too many (150 RP)
-[] Adult genetic engineering (100 RP)
-[] Does in vitro have something to do with wine? (100 RP)
-[] The key to Expert surgery is Ego (150 RP)
-[] Perfect Knockout (75 RP)
-[] Superhuman Uppers (100 RP)
-[] Navigator Genetics (400 RP)
-[] Navigator Gestation (150 RP)
-[] Dubious Dark Eldar Dissections (75 RP)

-[] Combat Neural Implants (50 RP)
-[] Advanced organ replacements (100 RP)
-[] Companion Cogitators (350 RP)
-[] Mood Regulators (100 RP)
-[] Pain Controller (100 RP)
-[] Advanced Combat cybernetics (150 RP)
-[] Chaos Corruption Cognitive Intervention (400 RP)
-[] Collaberative Computational R&D (250 RP)

-[] Rapid hacking (400 RP)

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As for whether we have enough weapons or not, considering where Dark Age ai, we are not nearly as overpowered as Canon usually has us being. This is partially because we're an explorer ai and we come from an earlier time period where their weapons technology wasn't as developed, but we definitely do need greater firepower and resilience against everything the 40K Galaxy can throw at us. Just because our Grand Cruiser is doing somewhat okay and void combat doesn't mean we can do a lot better. I'd rather overpower my enemies then just take it on faith we're doing okay.

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We're not a military AI or even an industrial AI. We're not going to stay parked somewhere developing industry for decades, nor are we going to go off fighting everything and conquering the galaxy. That's not who we are and not where our strengths are.

If somebody turns their shield into a corruption generator with a software update, we may only find out after it's turned on and is already doing bad things - and notably, flipping the switch could be done remotely, so a whole bunch of corruption generators could be done all at the same time, dealing widespread harm and overwhelming responders. It's not for nothing that I characterized this as a "city threatening" disaster.

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I suspect that, should people have their design-integrated shields, that would not cause that much destruction... and they and their cell would be immediately flagged and destroyed.

 

[Prime 2.0]

I don't recall the second one? And I think we've improved the shields since. But psy shields (with the breakage aspect resolved, that is) are enormously valuable to chaos-fearing sorts. At least, if they believe they do what they actually do.

Of course, like most Vita trade goods, they're elite goods that won't directly benefit most people.

Though really I would hesitate to worry about trade goods when we currently have zero candidates to trade with that way. (Half of one if you count the Space Marine pocket empire, but we can't realistically make contact with them by choice with our current navigation limits.)

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I'm mostly thinking about the Eldar as far as trade goes - We'd need to grow our navigator to find anyone else (or go to their main hub), though I still want to, of course. There's also the deal where, as a crossroads, people are going to show up at Denva, they'll come to us, and having exotic goods to send them away with will build ties that are good to have.

Neablis didn't say anything directly on trade good value? It's just... directly observable. 50 plasma guns, something so below our level of abstraction we got it for free, was a "princely gift". Psychic shielding meanwhile is one of the most expensive blueprint modifications we have, and is just as expensive to maintain.

Which is to say, at the moment we can produce more trade value with orders of magnitude less BP by selling anything but psychic shielding.

Unless we both make it self-repairing and cheap for us to produce, that's not changing. And getting those two things takes lead time - we have to start in advance

As for tech too dangerous for them to have right now, I spent a while discussing an example (alternate shield meanings), and just got a new reply about it:

I suspect that, should people have their design-integrated shields, that would not cause that much destruction... and they and their cell would be immediately flagged and destroyed.

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This wouldn't get Denva the ability to hand everyone a personal shield on its own, so people would get caught out in the open - and some household shields would fail before a response quashes the problem.

And even if that doesn't happen, corruption affects objects and environments, not just people. Chaos corruption is often called 'evil radiation' - and just like nuclear material, the ability to produce it has to be tightly monitored because responding quickly to a nuclear meltdown or a dirty bomb after it's already started still leaves you with a whole lot of city turned into an uninhabitable zone.

And because this is a machine doing it... well, I pointed this out before too, right? The cell doesn't have to be there when it turns on. Cultists can just... set activation timers, and leave. For the same reason, several shields can turn evil all at once to overwhelm surrounding, non-corrupted shields.

If you could download a dirty bomb in real life, we wouldn't be having this conversation, we'd probably just be dead. But it may become an actual possibility for Denva when alternate shield meanings is developed, if we don't have machine-spirit controlled psy shields first.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

Speaking of the Space Marines, another long-ish term goal of mine is to put together a ship with the best stealth, shields, psy-shielding, engines, etc we can manage, plus at least one troop bay, a load of the best psy-shielded bots we can build at the time, and an onboard factory capable of replenishing those bots decently quickly. Then staff it with a platoon of OMC trained infantry officers to control those bots and send it to help the marines. We can reasonably claim we're doing an archeotechnologically improved reimagining of the Legio Cybernetica and I think it could buy us some goodwill. Particularly if the onboard factories make other wargear for the marines when they aren't replacing bot casualties.

 

[Speedemon22]

Whose to say the Mechanicus won't run off with the first chance they get? Let's be real, any one of that tech they would do anything and everything for but all of that? It's better to ask what they wouldn't do for that technology.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

I mean, hence having it aboard a very well defended ship and sending it to help the marines, rather than the mechanicus?

And the mechanicus cooperate between nominally internal factions where one has techological secrets that the other really wants all the time, pretty much every forge-world has secrets from every other.

 

[Prime 2.0]

I mean, hence having it aboard a very well defended ship and sending it to help the marines, rather than the mechanicus?

And the mechanicus cooperate between nominally internal factions where one has techological secrets that the other really wants all the time, pretty much every forge-world has secrets from every other.

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Yeah. These are problems with solutions - export versions that are black boxed and which don't reveal our best capabilities, restrictions on how and where they are allowed to use the technology, keeping tabs on it with cogitaire detachments of "licensed service technicians" - there are plenty of conventional safeguards in real life for keeping your technological secrets while still trading goods made from them.

The above measures combined with our cogitare detachment having warp comms also means it'd be very difficult to steal or reverse engineer, because we'd know about any attempts immediately and we could make sure they know we know - part of trade agreement would likely include agreed-upon means of the trading partner managing security and punishments "in house" to stop it from becoming a reason for Vita to Come Over Here And Deal With It herself, should a violation occur.

 

[avatar11792]

We're not a military AI or even an industrial AI. We're not going to stay parked somewhere developing industry for decades, nor are we going to go off fighting everything and conquering the galaxy. That's not who we are and not where our strengths are.

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Who said that we would be "conquering the Galaxy"? We'll need to be possessing Superior firepower than our numerous enemies just to SURVIVE. The 40K Galaxy is a frighteningly dangerous place.

Also, in this situation I'm not saying we have to stay in place for a long time, literally developing Superior weapons technology is just one or two turns worth of research. They're not that expensive.

 

[Haganeko]

This wouldn't get Denva the ability to hand everyone a personal shield on its own, so people would get caught out in the open - and some household shields would fail before a response quashes the problem.

And even if that doesn't happen, corruption affects objects and environments, not just people. Chaos corruption is often called 'evil radiation' - and just like nuclear material, the ability to produce it has to be tightly monitored because responding quickly to a nuclear meltdown or a dirty bomb after it's already started still leaves you with a whole lot of city turned into an uninhabitable zone.

And because this is a machine doing it... well, I pointed this out before too, right? The cell doesn't have to be there when it turns on. Cultists can just... set activation timers, and leave. For the same reason, several shields can turn evil all at once to overwhelm surrounding, non-corrupted shields.

If you could download a dirty bomb in real life, we wouldn't be having this conversation, we'd probably just be dead. But it may become an actual possibility for Denva when alternate shield meanings is developed, if we don't have machine-spirit controlled psy shields first.

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I still think you are overstating both the risk and the severity of the consequences, but point taken.

Who said that we would be "conquering the Galaxy"? We'll need to be possessing Superior firepower than our numerous enemies just to SURVIVE. The 40K Galaxy is a frighteningly dangerous place.

Also, in this situation I'm not saying we have to stay in place for a long time, literally developing Superior weapons technology is just one or two turns worth of research. They're not that expensive.

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You are saying two or three turns (up to 10% of the quest's total runtime up to now) of doing essentially nothing but military research, when we have fires to put out, a fleet to build, a navigator to grow, and (going by those plans) manufactoring techs to also research is not a very large opportunity cost?

Having a fleet with armed ships will already improve our survival ability by a bunch. I do agree that some of those techs (especially streamlined ship design) are worth it, but we do need to do other things and becoming a major military power by ourselves (as opposed to with our allies) is not the one focus we need to have right now.

 

[Nightlord256]

Honestly, unless warp comm bandwidth and reliability are both well above what I expect, I don't think it's going to be possible to avoid handing our industrial base over to someone, so it's good we'll have the Cogitare established and under our authority for that purpose.

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The permeant manufacturing boon says we can give them a build order when we leave that they will work on. So as long as we know what we shouldn't need warp comms for building stuff back in Denva. There are still plenty of other very pressing reasons that warp comms in important however.

On the ship front, I'm hoping we get details on the chaos ship from the wreckage (or get a tech to acquire the info). I, specifically, want to know what cramming ratios they have for weapons / equipment and where their armor / shields fall on our ship design scale. I want these benchmarks so we can better plan out our ship design techs against the wider galaxy. For example, better cramming is always nice but if the standard is a flat 1.0 then I am a lot less worried about getting this. On the other hand, if most established militaries have cramming of 0.6 then we need to jump on that.

In short, I want to see how our ship building tech stacks up.

On the securing Denva against psychic threats, I think the 0 BP cost of a Faith is attractive and worth exploring. We should at least flip over Faith is My Shield? to see what the option looks like.

Will need to see what the situation looks like when the update drops and if we are switching to 2-Actions / update. In addition to a tighter focus on the actions, this would also let us split research to get a pre-req in the first half and then decide if we want to swing at the unlock.

 

[Angle]

If you could download a dirty bomb in real life, we wouldn't be having this conversation, we'd probably just be dead. But it may become an actual possibility for Denva when alternate shield meanings is developed, if we don't have machine-spirit controlled psy shields first.

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I will note, we can wait till we have MS CPS before we start handing the things out. Indeed, I want that ASAP too, but I don't want to delay on warp comms for it, we can research them in parallel.

 

[F0lkL0re]

I would prefer to wait until we get Hardware Psychic Encryption before getting serious about researching warp comms and it's prerequisites.

EDIT: We're not in a desperate hurry and have other things that need researching as well so we can afford to scale back slightly on the need for the warp comms

 

[Nightlord256]

Oh hey, I missed that Anexa was on the Curious Curios that Crit. Always nice for her to get another level.

 

[Prime 2.0]

I will note, we can wait till we have MS CPS before we start handing the things out. Indeed, I want that ASAP too, but I don't want to delay on warp comms for it, we can research them in parallel.

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Exactly. I'm not advocating for not getting warp comms - just cautioning that we won't get the full benefits until we're able to safely share it with Denva, which is definitely a factor in build order - as are my expectations of how much civilian infrastructure might be about to be built.

It's the combination of things that makes SSDIPS so appealing to me - if we have to wait for full benefits anyways because of cultist shits, and it turns out we have an opportunity to get a shitload of anti-cultist infrastructure done with the same BP Denva was going to spend on reconstruction anyways? I think it just makes sense.

Though granted, my positions are also founded on my perception of Wayfarer letting us stay at least 5 turns total, so ymmv on build order conclusions.


So, hm, assuming 1x construction, 1x command (for primus), 2x research... call it a budget of 525 RP.

Now, let's check on the research tab agai-

-[] The Taste of Chaos (100 RP)

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And just like that my plans have gone out the window! Gimme a bit, it's balling time.

 

[BigBadBob7070]

when we have fires to put out,

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Speaking of fires to put out, where do you think we should go next? I kinda want to to go Northwest since that's where we were told these Cultists bastards came from.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Alright @Angle, take a gander at this:

2x research:
-[] The Taste of Chaos (100 RP)
-[] Empathy at Range (200 RP)
-[] Faith is my shield? (60 RP -> complete)
-[] Small-scale design-integrated psychic shielding (150 RP)

With taste of chaos knocked down to a shocking third of its original price, we can now get the trifecta: Curios, Taste, and Range.

Empathy at range, of course, is one of the prereqs to warp comms.

A closer look at faith also reveals an interesting tidbit:

-[] Faith is my shield? (75 RP) Clearly the Imperium believes that faith can protect you from warp gribblies. It even seems like it might be true. How? Is there a way you can harness the effect without having to dedicate yourself to the Imperial creed? Also, what's going on with this skeletal hand you found? (Understanding the benefits of Faith. May unlock further research to allow Vita to design a less objectionable faith optimized for warp protection, and help develop better psyker training programs. Likely to unlock further understanding of relics and their usage.)

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This may synergize with the rest of our sensor stack - part of taste of chaos is that it helps find chaos relics. If we understand relics better in and of themselves, then so should our ability to sense them, right?

Now, you might ask - if I'm springing for long range warp sensors, why still do SSDIPS?

So, here's my thought: I recall that Neablis mentioned as far back as Ascalon when talking about webway gates and at Vorthryn when talking about scanning stations for chaos that a sensor closer to what it's scanning is a step up, and that empathy at range improves those sensors at all sizes.

This is relevant because of the following bit from Taste:

More useful in detecting cults than individuals, though will be able to detect chaos blessings. Like to unlock further research to screen for ever-smaller amounts of chaotic influence).

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Because yes, it offers a follow-up for figuring out that we're looking at chaos from less data, so to speak - but It is more useful for detecting cults than individuals, rather than not useful for that.

So I figure, if we jack up the potency and local availability of sensors, we can work on improving its reliability from the other end, in addition to the benefits of attaching psy shields to post-war rebuilding projects for free and long term utility for psy shields as a trade good.

I mean, that's been my assumption for a while now, but I figured it was a good idea to briefly restate it since it's part of this new research plan's thesis.

I think if we did this, Denva would definitely be clean enough to start doing full tech sharing again before we left. If we're lucky, maybe even by next turn - making finishing warp comms then an appealing prospect.

 

[Angle]

Alright @Angle, take a gander at this:

2x research:
-[] The Taste of Chaos (100 RP)
-[] Empathy at Range (200 RP)
-[] Faith is my shield? (60 RP -> complete)
-[] Small-scale design-integrated psychic shielding (150 RP)

With taste of chaos knocked down to a shocking third of its original price, we can now get the trifecta: Curios, Taste, and Range.

Empathy at range, of course, is one of the prereqs to warp comms.

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Yeah, but ASM is the bottom of the longer leg, which means if we want to avoid trying to blow through a tech and its prereqs in a turn, then it takes us three turns, if we start with ASM. I'd go:

2x research:
-[] Faith is my shield? (60 RP -> complete)
-[] The Taste of Chaos (100 RP)
-[] Hardware Psychic Encryption (50 RP)
-[] Alternative Shielding Meanings (150 RP)
-[] Machine Spirit Chaos resistance (75 RP)
-[] Large-scale Machine spirits (75 RP)


Or maybe some other 75 or 50 point tech for the last one. Could try MS CPS if you don't mind doubling up a tech and it's prereq? EaR and SSDIPS can both wait a turn, IMO.