Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest

[Nightlord256]

If we want to just design the tanks with Psy shields instead of getting the integrated tech, here are the costs.

Base - 15 RP - Light tanks (100 BP, 50 CP)

• Machine-spirits - (+0.5x base BP cost, -0.9x base CP cost)
• Psychic Shielding - (+4x base BP cost for tanks, +1x base RP to design blueprint)
• Less-than Lethal armament - (+0.5x base BP cost for vehicles)

Final - 30 RP - Shepard Light Riot Tank (600 BP, 5 CP); Machine Spirits, Psychic Shielding, Less-Than-Lethal weapons.
- we could discount this to 15 RP with Cogitare members no problem.

Not sure what will make most sense in the long run

 

[F0lkL0re]

So here's my plan for this turn

Research is focused on on the immediate problems of Bongo, finding the cults, upgrading our bots with less-then lethals and avoiding having another immediate massacre of our bots through warp energy exposure with the last RP going towards working on Companion Cogitators because it's a very large project and I think we all agree that the faster we get Chaos Corruption Cognitive Intervention rolled out the better.

Construction rebuilds the shipyard and a good chunk of the orbital manufactories so that we can start rolling out ships next turn, new bots to help with taking out the cults, status pods for our current prisoners so that they won't get up to mischief and the last few build points are earmark for Victan to use for bribes or anything that could help his work.

And then the last action is to clean up the cults which I'm sure we all agree is something we should do before any other bits of Denva diplomacy so that the cults can't dig in any further or cause bigger problems.

[] Plan no more cults please
-[] [Repair Bay]
--[] Fix 110 BP of Hull damage
--[] Repair 19 HP of Outer Hull Psy-Shields (95 BP)
--[] Rebuild Psy-Lab (200 * 1.5 = 350 BP)
--[] Start rebuilding Psy-Lab Shields 59 HP (295 * 1.5 = 442 BP)
-[] Construction (600 BP base + 5340 BP Orbital Manufactories + 1100 BP Voidforge Miners = 7040 BP)
--[] 2000 BP on repairing 20 Orbital Manufactories to Machine Spirit standards
--[] 3000 Bp to repairing the shipyard
--[] 2000 Specters 200 Bp
--[] 3000 Asimov MCR 375 BP
--[] 2000 Heinlein HCR 450 BP
--[] 1000 BP of status pods for our current prisoners
--[] 15 BP for Victan to spend as need be
-[] Research X 2 (400 RP base + 85 Anexa RP + 60 Anexa staff 545 RP)
--[] Abacus Manufacturing (50 RP)
--[] Hardware Psychic Encryption (50 RP)
--[] The Taste of Chaos (100 RP)
--[] Small-scale design-integrated psychic shielding (150 RP)
--[] 20RP to upgrade Specters with Less-than Lethal armament
--[] 25 RP to design Asimov MCR (main combat robot)
---[] Medium Infantry Bots (50 BP, 200 CP) + Humanization - (+15 base BP cost for combat bots,) + Machine Spirit Jammers - (+10 base BP) + Machine-spirits - (+0.5x base BP cost, -0.9x base CP cost) + Less-than Lethal armament - (+0.5x base BP cost for vehicles and small craft & bots.) = 125 BP 20 CP 25RP
--[] 25 RP to design Heinlein HCR (heavy combat robot)
---[] Heavy Infantry Bots (100 BP, 200 CP) + Humanization - (+15 base BP cost for combat bots,) + Machine Spirit Jammers - (+10 base BP) + Machine-spirits - (+0.5x base BP cost, -0.9x base CP cost) + Less-than Lethal armament - (+0.5x base BP cost for vehicles and small craft & bots.) = 225 BP 20 CP 25RP
--[] Companion Cogitators (145/350 RP)
-[] Orders: Help W to hunt the Cults and reunite Denva
-[] Anexa active action: Research
--[] The Taste of Chaos
-[] Victan active action: Support W against the cults
-[] Cia active Action: Support W against the cults

 

[Prime 2.0]

upgrading our bots with less-then lethals and avoiding having another immediate massacre of our bots through warp energy exposure with the last RP going towards working on Companion Cogitators because it's a very large project

Click to shrink...

Due to this being brought up to me on discord by Prime, I'm re-evaluating my plan. As the idea was to use those units as mobile scanners, tanks included for their mobility, that is out of the window for now. And as we cannot know the result of the rolls for research yet and so the exact effects and the costs, we cannot use the SSDIP for the Specter redesign either.

Click to shrink...

Shielded shuttles would be better for mobile scanning, wouldn't they?

Or drones. Would have to pony up 50 RP for miniaturized antigrav and point a slush fund or RP and BP at the final design, but I'd bet we could throw out sensor drones like confetti. If you want to go ham on mobile local sensors, that's probably the way to go.

...or, we could develop the drone tech and then point the entire slush fund at Denva similar to Neablis's clarification about shielded housing/clothing to see what they'd like us to assist making. Hm. Thoughts for the evening when I can do actual planning.

Research is focused on on the immediate problems of Bongo, finding the cults, upgrading our bots with less-then lethals and avoiding having another immediate massacre of our bots through warp energy exposure with the last RP going towards working on Companion Cogitators because it's a very large project and I think we all agree that the faster we get Chaos Corruption Cognitive Intervention rolled out the better.

Click to shrink...

You may want to hold off on the mass bot design, given Neablis has been saying SSDIPS gives us a design-for-RP option to build units and installations with shielding for no/reduced BP cost. See the link above for exact figures.

Our intel from the Echo's wreck indicated that the full sorceror is dead, leaving only apprentices - and Klyssar was their main holding after the echo, so we probably got most, if not all of the apprentices, so I don't think our bots are going to be screwed over by psychics soon.

 

[F0lkL0re]

Shielded shuttles would be better for mobile scanning, wouldn't they?

Or drones. Would have to pony up 50 RP for miniaturized antigrav and point a slush fund or RP and BP at the final design, but I'd bet we could throw out sensor drones like confetti. If you want to go ham on mobile local sensors, that's probably the way to go.

...or, we could develop the drone tech and then point the entire slush fund at Denva similar to Neablis's clarification about shielded housing/clothing to see what they'd like us to assist making. Hm. Thoughts for the evening when I can do actual planning.

You may want to hold off on the mass bot design, given Neablis has been saying SSDIPS gives us a design-for-RP option to build units and installations with shielding for no/reduced BP cost. See the link above for exact figures.

Our intel from the Echo's wreck indicated that the full sorceror is dead, leaving only apprentices - and Klyssar was their main holding after the echo, so we probably got most, if not all of the apprentices, so I don't think our bots are going to be screwed over by psychics soon.

Click to shrink...

Urrrrrgh give me a moment to process that and think of what to change.

I'm not firing on all cylinders at this exact moment and I'll definitely leave the links there so that I don't have to spend ages looking for power armour art that doesn't come from ether 40k or fallout again.

 

[DragonParadox]

Shielded shuttles would be better for mobile scanning, wouldn't they?

Or drones. Would have to pony up 50 RP for miniaturized antigrav and point a slush fund or RP and BP at the final design, but I'd bet we could throw out sensor drones like confetti. If you want to go ham on mobile local sensors, that's probably the way to go.

...or, we could develop the drone tech and then point the entire slush fund at Denva similar to Neablis's clarification about shielded housing/clothing to see what they'd like us to assist making. Hm. Thoughts for the evening when I can do actual planning.

Click to shrink...

I think the question of what kind of unit makes the best scanner misses the point somewhat. Sometimes you are going to want to send a drone because the situation is too dire and you do not want to expose humans, sometimes you are going to want to send a tank because you are expecting heavy armed resistance and sometimes you are going to want to send some people in power armor because you do not really want to test the bots targeting algorithm in that daycare. The ideal scanner is a box that you can slot into various configurations and that is what I think Denva will go for once we give them the tech.

 

[Aineko]

I think the question of what kind of unit makes the best scanner misses the point somewhat. Sometimes you are going to want to send a drone because the situation is too dire and you do not want to expose humans, sometimes you are going to want to send a tank because you are expecting heavy armed resistance and sometimes you are going to want to send some people in power armor because you do not really want to test the bots targeting algorithm in that daycare. The ideal scanner is a box that you can slot into various configurations and that is what I think Denva will go for once we give them the tech.

Click to shrink...

If you're expecting heavy armed resistance you don't need to send a chaos sniffer in front, you already know you've got a problem.

 

[F0lkL0re]

Okay changed the plan to just produce our current bots with only the Specters getting the less-than lethals and replacing the bot designs with miniaturized antigrav I've been wanting to research it for a while and you know while I'm at that I might as well throw in Improved Passive Stealth while I'm at it.

I'll think on it some more and maybe change things to research one of the FTL comms techs later.

[] Plan no more cults please
-[] [Repair Bay]
--[] Fix 110 BP of Hull damage
--[] Repair 19 HP of Outer Hull Psy-Shields (95 BP)
--[] Rebuild Psy-Lab (200 * 1.5 = 350 BP)
--[] Start rebuilding Psy-Lab Shields 59 HP (295 * 1.5 = 442 BP)
-[] Construction (600 BP base + 5340 BP Orbital Manufactories + 1100 BP Voidforge Miners = 7040 BP)
--[] 2100 BP on repairing 21 Orbital Manufactories to Machine Spirit standards
--[] 3000 Bp to repairing the shipyard
--[] 2000 Specters 226 Bp
--[] 3000 Medium Humanized Machine-spirit Infantry Bots 300 BP
--[] 2000 Heavy Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots with Machine Spirit Jammers 380 BP
--[] 1000 BP of status pods for our current prisoners
--[] 34 BP for Victan to spend as need be
-[] Research X 2 (400 RP base + 85 Anexa RP + 60 Anexa staff 545 RP)
--[] Abacus Manufacturing (50 RP)
--[] Hardware Psychic Encryption (50 RP)
--[] The Taste of Chaos (100 RP)
--[] Small-scale design-integrated psychic shielding (150 RP)
--[] 20RP to upgrade Specters with Less-than Lethal armament
--[] Miniaturized antigrav (50 RP)
--[] Improved Passive Stealth (50 RP)
--[] Companion Cogitators (95/350 RP)
-[] Orders: Help W to hunt the Cults and reunite Denva
-[] Anexa active action: Research
--[] The Taste of Chaos
-[] Victan active action: Support W against the cults
-[] Cia active Action: Support W against the cults

 

[DragonParadox]

If you're expecting heavy armed resistance you don't need to send a chaos sniffer in front, you already know you've got a problem.

Click to shrink...

You could be expecting heavily armed resistance for some other reason and want to know if these people are also chaos worshipers or just regular rebels who don't like your tax code or something. Denva is going to have at least localized internal conflicts going forward that have nothing to do with Chaos.

 

[Nightlord256]

Hark, a wild idea has appeared

10 RP - Spy satellite (10 void BP, 5 CP) A small spy satellite that lets you do your own surveillance on the planet below. Under your complete control and with better sensors and communication hardening than any of the local satellites.

Click to shrink...

@Neablis, if we integrated psychic shielding on a spy satellite would that give it sufficient warp sensor capacity to scan a slice of the planet from orbit? If it does, roughly how many satellites would we need to give Denva full coverage?

 

[KyleDaScourge]

Snip

Click to shrink...

This would seem better combined with Empathy At Range, which we need anyway for warp comms, and gaining the ability to build something like it is the general goal of my plan. Though I don't have a specific design for it included in my research, I may need to change that.

Edit - And also, if a satellite with psychic shielding is all that's needed, we've got the Caltrop already designed. They're more expensive, but it's been repeatedly stated and shown that Denva isn't short of manufacturing capacity, upping the defenses of the system is urgently needed anyway, and caltrops deployed en-masse around every population center is about the best way to do that without a working shipyard.

Edit 2 - Just for an additional clarification, some quick math based on the figure of the Crucibles giving us 15k VBP when we borrowed them, says that if Denva prioritized it for a turn, they could put 46 caltrops up in one turn to be placed around their various population centers both for chaos detection and defense.

 

[Speedemon22]

SNIP

Click to shrink...

Might want to add V2 to the title so people don't get confused.

 

[F0lkL0re]

Might want to add V2 to the title so people don't get confused.

Click to shrink...

As I stated the only reason there was a post with an updated version of the plan rather then just editing the old one is because I don't want to lose the image links.

Hark, a wild idea has appeared


@Neablis, if we integrated psychic shielding on a spy satellite would that give it sufficient warp sensor capacity to scan a slice of the planet from orbit? If it does, roughly how many satellites would we need to give Denva full coverage?

Click to shrink...

That is a good idea.

New plan removing Abacus Manufacturing, Miniaturized antigrav, Improved Passive Stealth and reducing Companion Cogitators by 70 RP to do Empathy at Range and design a spy satellite and taking 200 BP from the Orbital Manufactories to build the satellites.

[] Plan eyes in the skies
-[] [Repair Bay]
--[] Fix 110 BP of Hull damage
--[] Repair 19 HP of Outer Hull Psy-Shields (95 BP)
--[] Rebuild Psy-Lab (200 * 1.5 = 350 BP)
--[] Start rebuilding Psy-Lab Shields 59 HP (295 * 1.5 = 442 BP)
-[] Construction (600 BP base + 5340 BP Orbital Manufactories + 1100 BP Voidforge Miners = 7040 BP)
--[] 1900 BP on repairing 19 Orbital Manufactories to Machine Spirit standards
--[] 3000 Bp to repairing the shipyard
--[] 2000 Specters (226 Bp)
--[] 3000 Medium Humanized Machine-spirit Infantry Bots (300 BP)
--[] 2000 Heavy Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots with Machine Spirit Jammers (380 BP)
--[] 1000 BP of status pods for our current prisoners
--[] 10 vigil warp detection satellites in orbit of Denva Secundus (200 BP)
--[] 34 BP for Victan to spend as need be
-[] Research X 2 (400 RP base + 85 Anexa RP + 60 Anexa staff 545 RP)
--[] Hardware Psychic Encryption (50 RP)
--[] The Taste of Chaos (100 RP)
--[] Small-scale design-integrated psychic shielding (150 RP)
--[] 20RP to upgrade Specters with Less-than Lethal armament
--[] Empathy at Range (200 RP)
--[] vigil warp detection satellite (20 RP)
---[] 10 RP - Spy satellite (10 void BP, 5 CP) + Psychic Shielding - (+1x base BP cost for defensive installations +1x base RP to design blueprint) = 20 RP 20 void BP, 5 CP
--[] Companion Cogitators (25/350 RP)
-[] Orders: Help W to hunt the Cults and reunite Denva
-[] Anexa active action: Research
--[] The Taste of Chaos
-[] Victan active action: Support W against the cults
-[] Cia active Action: Support W against the cults

 

[Nightlord256]

This would seem better combined with Empathy At Range, which we need anyway for warp comms, and gaining the ability to build something like it is the general goal of my plan. Though I don't have a specific design for it included in my research, I may need to change that.

Click to shrink...

Since Vita is able to detect activity with our current sensors from orbit, I suspect it will work as is, but lets see what Neablis says.

Edit - And also, if a satellite with psychic shielding is all that's needed, we've got the Caltrop already designed.

Click to shrink...

While true, that is much more expensive. I also imagine that purpose plays a roll as well. Even though they have the same part mechanically, the purpose designed spy satellite will perform better at scanning. Although that does give me another idea...

For 10RP we could design a small station with psychic shields, living space, and improved sensors. Quick napkin maths - 250 BP hull and 600 BP cost. That would give Denva some very robust detection capabilities.

 

[Haganeko]

Spoiler: Plan: The Eye of Vita V3

[] Plan: The Eye of Vita V2
-[] Repair Bay (997/1,000 BP)
--[] Fix all hull damage. (110 BP)
--[] Repair all damage to Outer Hull Psychic Shielding. (19 HP, 95 BP)
--[] Rebuild the Basic Psychic Experimentation (200 * 1.5 = 350 BP)
--[] Start rebuilding Psy-Lab Shields 59 HP (295 * 1.5 = 442 BP)
-[] Construction: Gain build points equal to your build capacity, write in what you spend them on. | 5,340 VBP (Aetherion Manufactories) + 1,100 VBP (Voidforge Miners) + 600 VBP (Spark Manufactories) = 7,040
--[] Finish Psy-Lab Shields +76 HP [135 HP total] (380 * 1.5 = 570 VBP)
--[] Replenish remaining Light Machine-spirit tanks up to 100 (150 BP)
--[] Replenish remaining Medium Machine-spirit tanks up to 100 (375 BP)
--[] Replenish remaining Specters back to 1,000 and then construct an additional batch of 1,000 (200 BP)
--[] Replenish remaining Heavy Machine-spirit humanized Infantry Bots with Machine Spirit Jammers back to 1,000 and then construct an additional batch of 1,000 (380 BP)
--[] Replenish remaining Medium Humanized Machine-spirit Infantry Bots back to 1,000 and then construct an additional batch of 1,000 (200 BP)
--[] Repair the 41 damaged manufactories around Aetherion into Machine Spirit Orbital Manufactories (4,100 VBP)
--[] Build stasis pods to contain the 500 captured chaos cultists. (1,000 BP at the previously mentioned 2 BP / Person rate)
--[] Build 13 Personal Void Shields (65 BP)
-[] x2 Research: Gain research points equal to your research capacity, to be spent designing new blueprints or researching projects. Write in what you spend them on. | 400 RP + 85 (Anexa) + 60 (Cogitare) = 545 RP
--[] The Taste of Chaos (Makes your warp sensors very sensitive to Chaos-associated markers. 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) (100 RP)
---[] Anexa active Action: Research - assists a research action you take, granting +5xLevel RP to the action. Will level on a successful roll, scaled by the importance of the tech.
--[] Empathy at Range (Makes your warp sensors active at longer range, unlocks further research to pinpoint psychic activities from across the solar system. Half of the prereq for basic warp-based FTL communication) (200 RP)
--[] Large-Scale organic-machine Control (Allows OMC implants to control any kind of industrial production, including shipyards and non-military megastructures. Leads to further technology to improve the amount of CP one person can control.) (75 RP)
--[] Superconductive Shenanigans (A flat production boost of 5-15% depending on rolls) (50 RP)
--[] Abacus Manufacturing (Unlocks the void abacus ship equipment) (50 -> 100/100 = 50 RP)
--[] Faith is My Shield (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.) (15 -> 75/75 = 60 RP)
--[] Intelligence Coding (Helps you understand your own code. Prerequisite to building new AIs, starts command point tree and automation tree, also unlocks personality-checking research) (170 -> 180/400 = 10 RP)
-[] Diplomacy/Subversion: Talk to people. (Write-in goal & method)
--[] Talk to the Stellar Ascendancy government.
---[] Try to help them establish an organization for rooting out chaos. The Anti-Chaos Bureau? Coordinate with W.
----[] Victan active action: Diplomat-Spy - assists any diplomacy action you take, granting +Level to the dice to the action. Will level on a successful roll, scaled by the significance of the action.
-----[] Victan gets 13 Personal Void Shields to distribute between himself and members of his staff, or hand over as totally-not-bribes, or to give to field agents in the new agency as he feels best.
----[] Cia: Assist the Stellar Ascendancy's new Anti-Chaos Bureau with initial field operations mopping up any chaos cults they find.
-[] Free Action: Give the Stellar Ascendancy some technology...
---[] Give them Abacus Manufacturing and Warp Drive technology.
---[] Give them Large-Scale organic-machine Control.
---[] Give them warp scanner technology incorporating Empathy at Range and The Taste of Chaos for detecting chaos cults.

Spoiler: Plan Summary

Construction - Bring the remaining manufactories around Aetherion online (And build a couple of new ones), replace our destroyed troops and tanks and bring our total numbers up to the 10,000 we can carry, build stasis pods for all of our cultist prisoners so that they won't be constantly chipping away at our psy-shields with chaos-thoughts, and the last few spare points make some personal void shields because those are always a good trade item.

Research - Get taste of chaos because it lets us detect any organized cultist activity and stomp on it, Anexa focuses on this because that's a really important capability to have, then get empathy at range because it lets one sensor complex cover the whole system and is also a pre-req for warp comms. Finally grab large-scale OMC so that Denva and the Cogitare will be able to operate shipyards without needing thousands and/or tens of thousands of people. Grab superconductors to finally get that extra 5-15% industrial capacity. Finally finish abacus manufacturing so that we can build ships and get another Denva boon. Finish faith is my shield for additional understanding of warp-mind interactions and also so that we can look into designing a counter-chaos religion or two (It'll probably be really easy to make a faith for the Cogitare, less easy for Denva as a whole). Make a little progress on intelligence coding so that eventually we'll finish it.

Diplomacy - Give Denva a bunch more tech, including chaos-detectors, void abaci, and warp drives. The latter two immediately translate to one boon from Denva. Then have Victan try to help them set up an anti-chaos police force using all the anti-chaos tech we've given them, chiefly our new system-wide chaos detectors, to hopefully let them not only stomp all the existing cults but stay on top of preventing any new ones from forming. This hopefully gets us a second boon.

Next turn would ideally go into step one of my kickstart the singularity plan, with collaborative R&D research and a diplomacy action to help Denva establish their own research industry making use of it. If we can also squeeze in research engineering our own faith, then we would be in an excellent place with two boons for an immediate social intervention to introduce the religion and a long-term one to help it proselytize. We would hopefully have one boon remaining at that point from helping setup their R&D. We would also bring the shipyard back online and be ready to start churning out ships going forward.

Rationale...

Spoiler: Changes from V1

I hadn't realized we had quite so much to do with the repair bay, Credit to Nightlord256 I believe for pointing that out and giving specifics on what needs to be fixed.

Getting the psy-lab fully repaired involved taking out the two new orbital manufactories the original plan had us constructing.

Lastly, Cia has been retasked from passive training to actively assisting the Stellar Ascendancy as a temporary field agent helping their new anti-chaos organization stomp on any existing cults that the new scanners find, and then nip any new cults in the bud as soon as they become sufficiently established as to show up on the sensors or are otherwise found by more normal investigation.

Spoiler: Repair & Construction

Firstly, get the Spark fully repaired and the troop bay restocked to full capacity for the first time in quite awhile.

Secondly, get all of the remaining Aetherion Orbital Manufactories back online to maximize our available VBP for next turn.

Thirdly, build stasis pods for our captured cultists so that there is absolutely zero chance of them escaping or getting up to any mischief and also so that their constant chaos-thoughts won't be a constant drain on our psychic shielding. Our repair bay could probably easily keep up with that, but why put up with it at all?

Spoiler: Research

The Taste of Chaos lets us detect cults with our warp sensors. As soon as we have the ability to detect cults, the Stellar Ascendancy Armed Forces can go stomp on them. As soon as all the cults are stomped on we get another boon from Denva and also have less to worry about when it comes to continuing to trust them with stuff. This won't detect individual chaos agents, but there will likely be follow-ups to do that, and lone chaos-gunmen aren't anywhere near as much of a threat anyway. Anexa gets to focus on this because detecting cults is by far the most important capability coming online this turn.

Empathy at Range lets us and the Stellar Ascendancy only need to build a single chaos cult detector to cover the entire system instead of, at minimum, one per planet / population center. It is also one of three pre-reqs for warp comms, and of the two that we could research this turn it's the more immediately useful.

Large-Scale organic-machine Control will significantly aid the Stellar Ascendancy with rebuilding their space forces by making it possible to build and run a shipyard with a couple of dozen people instead of tens of thousands. It will let the Cogitare do the same thing, which is important because the Cogitare won't have tens of thousands of members for around a hundred years, whereas they are projected to have single-digit thousands by the time we leave the system, and finishing this research early and making sure they're trained with it will mean that those single-digit thousands will be more than enough to operate the entire Aetherion Industrial Complex, including using the shipyard to construct and send us any ships that we ask for once we're back into exploration mode.

Superconductive Shenanigans is an extremely cheap boost to all of our industry that has been sitting in our tech tree for too long for lack of the RP to get to it. Next turn we'll have 7,800 VBP from the Aetherion Industrial Complex and even a 5% boost to that is nothing to sneeze at regardless of everything else.

Abacus Manufacturing has to get done to let us build more ships. It will also let the Stellar Ascendancy and Cogitare do the same and net us another boon from Denva.

Faith is My Shield is sitting partially complete in our tech-tree and is a pre-req for engineering our own anti-chaos religion. Hopefully we will be able to at least get started on actually doing that next turn, and doing so soon should allow us to both take best advantage of the current upheaval and trauma in the system and make use of a couple of boons we're likely to have at the time to maximize the adoption rate of our new religion.

Intelligence Coding gets the remainder because it's also sitting partially complete in our tech-tree and it's absolutely something we do need to finish eventually, it's just that more immediate priorities keep coming up.

Spoiler: Diplomacy

Firstly, this consists of handing over a lot of technology.

Abacus and Warp Drive production nets us an immediate boon and was something we decided to do forever ago anyway. The Stellar Ascendancy absolutely needs to be able to design and build their own ships.

Large-Scale organic-machine Control, as discussed in the research section, will vastly simplify building those ships for them. I cannot understate how much easier I expect it will be for them to build and run OMC Shipyards as opposed to manual ones.

Giving them our new chaos detector technology will let them become the only human polity in existence that can immediately detect and step on any chaos cults as they form. I'd say it also has good odds of letting them detect and squash genestealer cults as well, which is a bonus.

Stasis technology will give them the safest possible option for long-term storage of captured cultists, which pairs nicely with the drug technology we already gave them for non-lethally capturing those cultists.

Lastly, we give Victan a handful of personal void shields in case he needs to totally-not-bribe some people or keep himself and some of his guys safe, then we send him to help the Stellar Ascendancy actually make use of all this new technology to establish an organization for rooting out chaos within their territory.

Cia goes along to be a temporary field agent with the new Anti-Chaos Bureau while they mop up any already established cults detected by the scanners and then stomp out any new ones as they arise for a bit, until hopefully we're confident that they're ready to operate fully independently at the end of the turn.

@Neablis given what you've said about write-ins, I wanted to run my plan by you before finalizing it ahead of the actual voting. Particularly, building stasis pods for our captured cultists at 2 BP/Prisoner in the build action, and using a diplomacy action with Victan and Cia assisting to help Denva and W set up some kind of anti-chaos police organization making use of warp scanners with empathy at range and taste of chaos to find and squash cults. Or would I be better just writing an orders action to squash all the cults we can find with that same tech?

Edit - And also, I suppose, building two batches of various bots and having the first count as "Bring our current stock of however many are left after the battle at the nest up to an even thousand" just to get the numbers simplified.

Click to shrink...

I am unsure about the idea of Superconductive Shenanigans and LSV OMC. I think getting things like Lower Spec/Gamified OMC and Collab R&D would be much better for helping Denva man their stations and bots.

Lower Spec/Gamified is also very good if you are concerned about Cogitare numbers; additionally, Collab R&D will increase our RP/turn, which means doing it immediately is very good.

So here's my plan for this turn

Research is focused on on the immediate problems of Bongo, finding the cults, upgrading our bots with less-then lethals and avoiding having another immediate massacre of our bots through warp energy exposure with the last RP going towards working on Companion Cogitators because it's a very large project and I think we all agree that the faster we get Chaos Corruption Cognitive Intervention rolled out the better.

Construction rebuilds the shipyard and a good chunk of the orbital manufactories so that we can start rolling out ships next turn, new bots to help with taking out the cults, status pods for our current prisoners so that they won't get up to mischief and the last few build points are earmark for Victan to use for bribes or anything that could help his work.

And then the last action is to clean up the cults which I'm sure we all agree is something we should do before any other bits of Denva diplomacy so that the cults can't dig in any further or cause bigger problems.

[] Plan no more cults please
-[] [Repair Bay]
--[] Fix 110 BP of Hull damage
--[] Repair 19 HP of Outer Hull Psy-Shields (95 BP)
--[] Rebuild Psy-Lab (200 * 1.5 = 350 BP)
--[] Start rebuilding Psy-Lab Shields 59 HP (295 * 1.5 = 442 BP)
-[] Construction (600 BP base + 5340 BP Orbital Manufactories + 1100 BP Voidforge Miners = 7040 BP)
--[] 2000 BP on repairing 20 Orbital Manufactories to Machine Spirit standards
--[] 3000 Bp to repairing the shipyard
--[] 2000 Specters 200 Bp
--[] 3000 Asimov MCR 375 BP
--[] 2000 Heinlein HCR 450 BP
--[] 1000 BP of status pods for our current prisoners
--[] 15 BP for Victan to spend as need be
-[] Research X 2 (400 RP base + 85 Anexa RP + 60 Anexa staff 545 RP)
--[] Abacus Manufacturing (50 RP)
--[] Hardware Psychic Encryption (50 RP)
--[] The Taste of Chaos (100 RP)
--[] Small-scale design-integrated psychic shielding (150 RP)
--[] 20RP to upgrade Specters with Less-than Lethal armament
--[] 25 RP to design Asimov MCR (main combat robot)
---[] Medium Infantry Bots (50 BP, 200 CP) + Humanization - (+15 base BP cost for combat bots,) + Machine Spirit Jammers - (+10 base BP) + Machine-spirits - (+0.5x base BP cost, -0.9x base CP cost) + Less-than Lethal armament - (+0.5x base BP cost for vehicles and small craft & bots.) = 125 BP 20 CP 25RP
--[] 25 RP to design Heinlein HCR (heavy combat robot)
---[] Heavy Infantry Bots (100 BP, 200 CP) + Humanization - (+15 base BP cost for combat bots,) + Machine Spirit Jammers - (+10 base BP) + Machine-spirits - (+0.5x base BP cost, -0.9x base CP cost) + Less-than Lethal armament - (+0.5x base BP cost for vehicles and small craft & bots.) = 225 BP 20 CP 25RP
--[] Companion Cogitators (145/350 RP)
-[] Orders: Help W to hunt the Cults and reunite Denva
-[] Anexa active action: Research
--[] The Taste of Chaos
-[] Victan active action: Support W against the cults
-[] Cia active Action: Support W against the cults

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I know you've given up on this plan (interesting designs, btw) but I just want to mildly protest Heinlein's name there. To call the man "problematic" is to give him a pass. Le Guinn is right there. As are Clark and Herbert. The last one is especially good because it will catch some stray Worm fans ;P

Shielded shuttles would be better for mobile scanning, wouldn't they?

Or drones. Would have to pony up 50 RP for miniaturized antigrav and point a slush fund or RP and BP at the final design, but I'd bet we could throw out sensor drones like confetti. If you want to go ham on mobile local sensors, that's probably the way to go.

...or, we could develop the drone tech and then point the entire slush fund at Denva similar to Neablis's clarification about shielded housing/clothing to see what they'd like us to assist making. Hm. Thoughts for the evening when I can do actual planning.

You may want to hold off on the mass bot design, given Neablis has been saying SSDIPS gives us a design-for-RP option to build units and installations with shielding for no/reduced BP cost. See the link above for exact figures.

Our intel from the Echo's wreck indicated that the full sorceror is dead, leaving only apprentices - and Klyssar was their main holding after the echo, so we probably got most, if not all of the apprentices, so I don't think our bots are going to be screwed over by psychics soon.

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We're short on RP more than BP. Not sure we want to research drones right now when satelites or a bot redesign are options.

This would seem better combined with Empathy At Range, which we need anyway for warp comms, and gaining the ability to build something like it is the general goal of my plan. Though I don't have a specific design for it included in my research, I may need to change that.

Edit - And also, if a satellite with psychic shielding is all that's needed, we've got the Caltrop already designed. They're more expensive, but it's been repeatedly stated and shown that Denva isn't short of manufacturing capacity, upping the defenses of the system is urgently needed anyway, and caltrops deployed en-masse around every population center is about the best way to do that without a working shipyard.

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Denva isn't short on ground BP. Void BP and ship slots, they still have a bunch, but not nearly as much. Empathy at Range may also not be needed for scanning within the same planet. Empathy at Range allows for much vaster distances.

The Caltrop is way, way more expensive and not fitted for scanning the whole planet like satelites could. Especially without Empathy at Range.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

I am unsure about the idea of Superconductive Shenanigans and LSV OMC. I think getting things like Lower Spec/Gamified OMC and Collab R&D would be much better for helping Denva man their stations and bots.

Lower Spec/Gamified is also very good if you are concerned about Cogitare numbers; additionally, Collab R&D will increase our RP/turn, which means doing it immediately is very good.

Denva isn't short on ground BP. Void BP and ship slots, they still have a bunch, but not nearly as much. Empathy at Range may also not be needed for scanning within the same planet. Empathy at Range allows for much vaster distances.

The Caltrop is way, way more expensive and not fitted for scanning the whole planet like satelites could. Especially without Empathy at Range.

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Superconductive Shenanigans is debatable as a priority but I think LS-OMC is much less so. Not having it leaves a crucial gap in the capabilities of the Cogitare and makes the building of ships enormously staggeringly more labor intensive and thus logistically intensive. Lower Spec/Gamified OMC and Collab R&D are all also important but I think LS-OMC slides into the gap of addressing a crucial capability gap and also being fairly cheap, which means it makes it into my current plan. And on the subject of OMC-Techs, I'd also say Interchangeable OMC is extremely important and Streamlined is a close runner up. My current thinking though, is that LS-OMC, Collab R&D, Lower Spec, and then Companion Cogitators in roughly that order will fully fill out the must-haves on the OMC/Cybernetics tree and leave the Cogitare and Stellar Ascendancy both in an amazing position for further research, with everything else in the tree being software issues that they can solve on their own.

We know Denva has ground and void BP to go around but do they have any ship construction slots to speak of? I'm pretty sure the large shipyard at Aetherion was their main one, which we now own and still need to repair. I don't think the nest had any? And any in ordit over Denva itself would have been early casualties of the fighting. I sort of expect our shipyard to be the only one left in the system, unless Denva has already built a new one, and everyone they had with experience running one to have been killed. Which makes now an awfully good time to prioritize LS-OMC.

I'm unsold on a spy satellite inherently making for a better warp sensor platform, warp sensors have nothing to do with conventional ones, and we don't yet have a blueprint or modification option specifically for them. Lacking that, I'd expect larger shields to provide better sensory data, especially with Empathy at Range, which my plan has.

 

[meianmaru]

@Neablis, if we integrated psychic shielding on a spy satellite would that give it sufficient warp sensor capacity to scan a slice of the planet from orbit? If it does, roughly how many satellites would we need to give Denva full coverage?

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I had this idea before, but then I took a look at what even an upgraded warp sensitivity in our psy shielding looks like.

-[] Empathy at Range (200 RP) Your warp sensors work well on things that are nearby, but they're definitely not able to detect anything large beyond combat range, or smaller things beyond very close range. Maybe it's a matter of improving sensitivity, maybe you need to specifically build some parts of your psychic shield to extend range. (Makes your warp sensors active at longer range, unlocks further research to pinpoint psychic activities from across the solar system. Half of the prereq for basic warp-based FTL communication)

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So if we want a satellite design that picks anything useful from the ground with its warp shielding/sensors, we want EaR (heh, puns). In fact, with the new revelations about the SSDIPS applying only to new blueprints, not existing designs, I've been strongly considering adding it to my plan. Maybe even doing a 3x Research action to get it, dropping an Order action to make room, and then just spamming the existing design for psy shielded bunkers as those will be static defenses that won't require Order actions to move.

Because with extended range and enough bunkers, we could get a triangulation-effect going. Then throw in a psy shielded bot like the upgraded Specter specs you made with less-than-lethals, and just throw them at Aevon en masse for them to use. If that is not enough to completely solve the issue, we can do an Order action on the next turn. But the new anti-Chaos techs and the materials should help at least in stabilizing the issue somewhat meanwhile.

 

[F0lkL0re]

I know you've given up on this plan (interesting designs, btw) but I just want to mildly protest Heinlein's name there. To call the man "problematic" is to give him a pass. Le Guinn is right there. As are Clark and Herbert. The last one is especially good because it will catch some stray Worm fans ;P

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Well my original idea was to make a shielded medium bot called the Herbert but the BP cost afterwards was to high so I had the idea to call the new medium the Asimov due to the robot part as I'm sure you guessed.

Calling the heavy Heinlein was due to him making powered armour a big thing in starship troopers (as far as I know due to not having read any of his stuff) and he was the only one I could think of at the time who wasn't involved in 40k or fallout, I might go with Clark for it instead but if anyone has any authors they know of that had some books that involved powered armour that I could use instead of Heinlein that would be great.

I do want to call a proper infiltration unit the Arnold at some point and I'm sure everyone knows why.

My brother suggested Gibson and I find myself very disappointed that we never named the Spector that instead of the usual ghost themed name for a stealth bot.

Denva isn't short on ground BP. Void BP and ship slots, they still have a bunch, but not nearly as much. Empathy at Range may also not be needed for scanning within the same planet. Empathy at Range allows for much vaster distances.

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And Empathy at Range might allow for any warp detection satellites to act as a early warning system for incoming ships.

 

[henkalv]

Just binged the quest last night/today, thank you for writing it Neablis.

Not sure about what plans to go for, and by the discourse it seems like what research to go for have been contested for a while.

Something that seems useful to me, but which I haven't seen any talk about is doing an action to try for a naval officer hero. Vita is explicitly not made for space combat and Cia is more focused on personal combat so it isn't really covered by our current heroes. I think we need it as we are essentially playing a wandering ship/fleet. More naval engagements seem inevitable. Having a commander and some support staff seem especially useful if we make some escort vessels that we bring with us at some point, but we should get one now and start leveling them up.

So I hope we pick up a small officer core while we are in Devna.

 

[Prime 2.0]

You could be expecting heavily armed resistance for some other reason and want to know if these people are also chaos worshipers or just regular rebels who don't like your tax code or something. Denva is going to have at least localized internal conflicts going forward that have nothing to do with Chaos.

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Not our problem, IMO. Security crackdowns don't work to quell unrest anyways - so much so that insurgencies regularly try to provoke them to generate new recruits.

Our military goal with the insurgencies is not to generate the force needed to bust a cell - we have that already, and can concentrate force wherever they're found just by keeping a reserve force separate from our regular patrol forces using the units we and Denva already have.

As far as I can tell, our unmet military development goals for the anti-insurgency campaign are:

1. Effectively search for the cultists and dangerously corrupted,
2. Deter and otherwise protect against terror attacks (especially but not exclusively chaos-based ones),
3. Identify terror attacks that are attempted anyways as early as possible,
4. Respond to terror attack attempts from 3 as rapidly as possible.

Sensor drones and/or empathy at range will do 1 and 3, visible protections ubiquitous civilian shielding via SSDIPS and/or patrol forces can do 2, patrol forces ground-side reinforced by reserve forces in shuttles staged above pop centers is one way to achieve 4.

And since it hasn't been brought up - if you want to overachieve on 4, research Boarding Measures and design the scanner satellites with drop pods. There are multiple approaches to meeting our needs here - we just need to assemble a set that satisfies them, possibly while furthering other goals outside of anti-insurgency such as warp comms or saving on troop upgrade costs if we can manage it.

And Empathy at Range might allow for any warp detection satellites to act as a early warning system for incoming ships.

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They allow some level of scanning from across the system, so they definitely do.

Sensor effectiveness in general is about strength and proximity - EaR increases strength, but the resulting sensors still benefit from proximity, which is why it's not necessarily redundant to pair that with shield equipped patrol forces or shielded civilian infrastructure and personal shields ala SSDIPS. For the purpose of detecting an incoming chaos ship that conventional sensors otherwise would not, EaR on its own should be sufficient, given Denva's existing navy all have shields and The Spark itself is still in system.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

I think Empathy at Range and Taste of Chaos combined with some kind of void platform is the best approach for broad scanning but as far as up close "boots on the ground" detection, we've got the design for personal psychic shields that can be attached to either power or carapace armor and would allow for a significantly more flexible approach on the ground then "hordes of kill/sedation bots lacking the concept of restraint". The only question is whether we would have to have Armor Device Integration to actually let the troops get feedback from the shields in which case probably not because we can't spare 200 RP right now.

 

[F0lkL0re]

The only question is whether we would have to have Armor Device Integration to actually let the troops get feedback from the shields in which case probably not because we can't spare 200 RP right now.

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We'd also need Heavy Armor Production Line so that we and/or Denva can actually produce enough armour for their forces to matter without paying ridiculous amounts of BP for them. (currently at 5 BP per suit)

 

[Prime 2.0]

Thankfully, Neablis already answered about Denva being able to make personal psychic shields and shielded housing. Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest Mature - Sci-Fi

Namely, that they will attempt to do the designs on their own, even if we only just give them SSDIPS, but that we could chip in RP to speed it up - between 10-100RP. I assume that will probably depend on the SSDIPs roll given the wide range of RP design requirements that might result.

I figure we just make a slush fund of 100 RP and say for the needed amount of design help to go to Denva and then take overflow from that and put it into something else like intelligence coding.

 

[meianmaru]

They allow some level of scanning from across the system, so they definitely do.

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Unfortunately, that seems to be only the follow-up tech after EaR:

(Makes your warp sensors active at longer range, unlocks further research to pinpoint psychic activities from across the solar system. Half of the prereq for basic warp-based FTL communication)

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Longer range is still longer range, of course, but it is pretty clear that EaR doesn't yet reach anything truly long when measuring on void-combat-ranges.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Unfortunately, that seems to be only the follow-up tech after EaR:

Longer range is still longer range, of course, but it is pretty clear that EaR doesn't yet reach anything truly long when measuring on void-combat-ranges.

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Well, It's a good thing all of the surviving Navy has psychic shields then, so we won't usually have to scan from across the system entirely.

This is all supplemental to conventional scanners that do work across the system regardless, so I think we're still fine.

 

[KyleDaScourge]

On a totally unrelated note, we probably won't be able to afford the ~700 RP or so to make it happen for a while, but I would be extremely interested in doing some research on more stealth, better missiles, and exterminatus-grade warheads and then designing a fast and quiet destroyer with long-range exterminatus-grade stealth-missiles to go try and blow up the chaos forgeworld.