- Location
- United Kingdom
The math is wrong on this. 9 Manufactories gives 450 BP, so the last Construction action should be 1950+450=2400 BP, so you have 200 more BP to play with. Maybe replace 4 fighters with an Underground Anti-Orbital lance?
Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest
- Thread starter Neablis
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
Sure - but we need more than just stealth fighters. We need a void shield so we can survive long enough for them to take out all the killsats, if things go hot, and ideally an anti-orbital lance to help take out any killsats that turn out to be too heavily defended for our stealth fighters to handle.
Again, both things that are unreasonably expensive and an unnecessary distraction. We already have a solution mostly implemented, and that's hacking + stealth fighters + void shield, we just need to follow through and actually build the damn things.
I don't believe that. It would be miserable, but I think my plan should have us prepared to win a slugfest after next turn, if only barely.
- Location
- Sydney
If I trade that underground manufactory for 3 more unconcealed manufactories would be more than doubling the number of unconcealed manufactories, which is exactly what I wanted to avoid.
Educate is a risk, a risk of hostility towards Magos Vita. We are fairly well hidden, and the acolytes have learned to conceal their messages. The manufactories under construction will permit a crash build if Educate becomes a disaster.
Technically our countermeasures are not a cognitohazard and can be explained. However if we explain that we are constantly projecting 'NO' towards the Warp then that risks her theorising enemy Warp entities, aka Chaos.
If we had a reason to tell her immediately that would be one thing, however we could easily delay this for a few turns.
Knowing about Chaos is a risk of corruption, knowing why reduces that risk. But whether igorance or warning is safer is highly situational.
She is living on our ship, and is protected by our psychic shielding most of the time. Knowing risks her thinking about Chaos, and weakening our shielding. She may be fine with the protection of her Soul, but it would be a problem for us if the shield falls.
Building that many manufactories means we will not become "really suspicious" , that is not the same as staying inconspicuous.
If we double our manufactories this turn we will be suspicious to the Mechanicus, it is fairly low risk but the risk still exists.
It is a balancing of risk. Each plan is made using the planner's opinon of the relative levels of risk.
There is the threat of ground armies, nuclear balistic missiles, possible air attack, kill satellites, and maybe more.
Your list of 'What we need now' has it's own risks, such as basic stealth "They shouldn't be especially noticeable to anybody not actively looking". Once the attack on the satellites begins they will be actively looked for, and tracked to our underground spaceports. Assuming the attack on the kill satellites with stealth fighter/bombers goes as planned, our void shield will be overwhelmed by a mass strike of ICBMs.
There is a time limit, our timeline for recovering the STC, but we still have time to prepare rather than immediately commiting to dealing with the danger of the kill satellites.
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You'd need about 4 of them to snipe the sats as they came over the horizon though without some kind of jamming or something there's an even chance they'd get a shot off at you before you took them down. That also wouldn't quite suffice to take all of the ones in orbit above you without warning, you'd need 10 or so for that.
Side note here - you don't want to rush them with shuttles. Shuttles can't blow up satellites. That's a fighter's job.
Is there a reason you think the governer did it? Not saying he didn't, but that isn't the most natural conclusion from the evidence you have.
Nope. I'm not sure what specialties will look like, but they're... special. Probably a +5/10/15/20 on the research roll depending on if she's level 1-9, 10-19, 20-29 or 30. She'll also only be able to have one specialty per tier, so one for levels 1-9, another for 10-19, etc, 4 max. And she's not going to get to level 30 anytime soon. It's going to be very hard to level past about 17 or so.
That's basically the "Not yet" with a write-in to tell her a little bit. Future turns will be able to override it.
Note for planners - if you do improved passive stealth, then that'll unlock a set of new designs (advanced stealth fighters/shuttles/bombers/assault shuttles) that'll cost either 75/100/125 RP depending on if you've researched the basic stealth/unstealthed/haven't researched the base design. I'll allow you to do the improved passive stealth research, then spend 100 additional RP to unlock advanced fighters. You can even designate BP to build them, but the exact cost will depend on the improved research roll so you won't know exactly how many you're getting. But they'll be between 30-50 bp, and you can do something like "1000 bp to fighters, leftover to an underground magnetic launch system" if you want.
Yeah, fighters are better.
Yes. As above, you can even research something, design what comes out of it and build it. Things will get a bit sketchy and I'd like to avoid too many conditionals, but I don't want to force you to push everything back for multiple turns which is the other option.
You can. I've added one to the designable blueprints:
50 RP - Basic space stealth missile (5 BP, 1 CP) An orbital missile with an explosive payload. Can't get up to orbit on its own, but it can be launched with a magnetic launch system or dropped off by shuttles, though neither approach is especially fast. Once in orbit and inactive it is fairly stealthy until activated, at which point it can attack nearly any target in orbit. One missile should do it for a satellite, but many would be required to attack a ship or platform.
Added to the research page. It requires advanced neural implants and the cost will depend on what you roll on that tech.
There's probably more stuff I've missed. Feel free to @ me for some more questions.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Can Victan's bonus apply to -[] Subvert on the mechanicus? If so, are there any prerequisites to that bonus applying, e.g. "tell him we're an AI", "can't be done this turn", etc.
The Imperial administration, broadly speaking must have made it, in the context of the post I was answering to it seems unlikely that each of the Enclaves has access to some part of the system, the codes, such that exist would be for all of them.
Unfortunately, any shutdown code will be buried extremely deep in the satellite's code, to the point where we could probably use said level of access to shut down the system without the codes.
Of course, that assumes the emergency shutdown system is actually part of the main system. It could be instead part of an entirely separate system that uses analog methods to prevent a launch. Methods like moving a piece of high density metal so that it separates two pieces of the launch system would be virtually impossible to detect, nevermind hack.
Insult Everyone!
Master of Evil but bad at it.
- Location
- Right behind you~
I like the catapult, it's my favourite of the options. But I don't think we particularly need or benefit from it at this point. Our ports will achieve the same, at least until we need to scale up more.
Besides that? Yeah. I like mag-heaven plan.
Angle's right though. We really should be getting ready to take things to the next level. Personally, I'd like to have the mechanicus dealt with by turn 15 or so, tops.
Getting those combat cybernetics, neurals and MMI's done would probably help with that. Bit expensive though.
Besides that? Yeah. I like mag-heaven plan.
Angle's right though. We really should be getting ready to take things to the next level. Personally, I'd like to have the mechanicus dealt with by turn 15 or so, tops.
Getting those combat cybernetics, neurals and MMI's done would probably help with that. Bit expensive though.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
They're machine spirits, they adapt to what is unusual and unusual. And perhaps that code is still there, but maybe the mechanicus has inserted an override to allow their own units to take control, so a countersignal on the official frequency does nothing. Or worse, maybe the system was never built by the governor in the first place and the shutdown you're looking for just doesn't exist.
Ultimately, your argument is dependent on so many hypotheticals, it is almost completely imaginary.
I could just as easily argue that we should study poetry post haste, because Thalya is clearly a romantic at heart desperately longing for Vita to show her the littlest bit of affection, and at this point either side of the argument has about the same evidence.
But there's millions of people in the galaxy who know about Chaos and aren't batshit insane cultists. And I personally would prefer we don't repeat the same mistakes the Emperor did with the Primarchs and refuse to our people anything about Chaos in the hopes they just never encounter it, b/c it's not going to end well.
1 missile = 1 fucked kill sats?!
That means with 500 void BP we could a "fuck all 100 kill sats" force.
+ Some jamming to make sure no killsat Drops its load before being shot down and we are good on that front!
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
No, you wouldn't. We have 22 manufactories on the surface now, doubling that would mean building 22 more - you only wanted to build 10 on the surface.
We don't know that. It takes us months to build things, even with a crash build - our turns are, what? A year long? Five years long? Something like that? Where as hostilities can break out much, much faster. Hence why I think we shouldn't push our luck.
The first three I think we have handled - it's the fourth that worries me. Though we should probably touch up our defenses against the more conventional threats as well - and luckily, they're all things that void shields and stealth fighters can help with.
As for the risk of our stealth fighters being spotted, I don't intend to use them until we're ready to blow things up, and they'll *definitely* notice that part. The stealth is just to buy us time to take out more satellites once things get hot, not to prevent them from acting entirely.
As for time limits, that's not the time limit - we can probably string Thalya along indefinitely on that front, after all, according to what we've told her, we've been searching for this thing for three hundred years - another hundred years is nothing. The worry is that we get our cover blown from some other direction, which will probably happen eventually no matter what we do.
Okay, fighters it is!
...Hmm. Need to recalculate based on this...
...And this...
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
I'd like to double up and go for a 2 to 1 superiority, but yeah, the missile force seems pretty attractive.
- Location
- United Kingdom
So with this we could do something like this:
-[] Construction x3 (1,300 GBP + 1950 GBP + 2400 GBP)
--[] Construction slot, 1st (1,300 GBP)
---[] 13x Manufactories (100 BP, 50 CP)
--[] Construction slot, 2nd (1950 GBP)
---[] 9x Manufactories (100 BP, 50 CP)
---[] Medium Void-shield Installation (1050/3000 BP, 50 CP)
--[] Construction slot, 3rd (2400 GBP)
---[] Medium Void-shield Installation (3000/3000 BP, 50 CP)
---[] Advanced Stealth Fighters (X BP, 5 CP) : 450 BP worth
----[] Spend overflow on Trade Goods
-[] Research x1 (200 RP)
--[] Research slot, 1st
---[] Improved Passive Stealth (100 RP)
---[] Blueprint: Advanced Stealth Fighters (25 BP, 5 CP) (100 RP)
If we're not putting anything up into orbit this turn then I'd rather do the Medium Void Shield over the Maga-pult. That can be done next turn.
They're not a monolith, if anything I can see them not trusting their rivals to have complete control over the system resulting in each controlling a piece.
Redundancy would be better yeah. Doing them and some fighters would probably be best.
Or, and hear me out, we build a bunch of stealth fighters or Bombers and simply blow those killsats the fuck up
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
I don't like the missiles so much - they're only good for dealing with the killsats, and we have to amass them and leave them in orbit where they can be spotted, and they take a bunch of extra steps. I think we're better off going with the fighters and the void shield.
It looks like you're making your void shield buried? It probably doesn't need to be buried, concealed should be fine, which cuts the cost down to 2000.
It looks like you're making your void shield buried? It probably doesn't need to be buried, concealed should be fine, which cuts the cost down to 2000.
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How about building the mag-yeeter + 500 BP of rockets now (+the researches), do void shield, advanced fighter and a second set of 500 rockets next turn?
Means we'd have an uncomfortably tight solution now and can then extend it next turn to have much more favourable safety margins.
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- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
[ ] Plan Draft: Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst.
-[ ] Research X2 (200+200=400 RP)
--[ ] Improved Passive Stealth (100 RP)
--[ ] Improved Stealth Fighters (100 RP, 25 BP, 5 CP)
--[ ] Machine spirit jamming (150 RP)
--[ ] Secrets of the Machine Spirits (Whatever's left over after we research everything else. Can sacrifice research to boost other things if necessary.)
-[ ] Construction Act 1 (1300 BP)
--[ ] Manufactory X4 (400 BP, 200 CP)
--[ ] Anti-Orbital Defenses, concealed (200 BP, 5 CP)
--[ ] Medium Void-shield Installation, concealed (700/2000 BP)
-[ ] Construction Act 2 (1500 BP)
--[ ] Medium Void-shield Installation, concealed (700 +1300/2000 BP, 50 CP)
--[ ] Improved Stealth Fighter X ?? (200 BP, ?? CP)
-[] Anexa passive action: Education - Roll to level, difficulty is 10+5xLevel
How do you treat your new acolytes among the Mechanicus?
You have some leftover effort from your existing action. You can get in touch with them and start one of the following for free.
-[] Promote
Teach them what they need to know to get ahead in the mechanicus. The least likely to backfire, but they'll be less loyal to you.
Least risky thing other than just cutting them off entirely. Kinda sad to not do more with them but I don't think we can aford the risk.
Anexa about Chaos
-[ ] We tell her how dangerous Chaos is, but also that we have countermeasures that seem to be sufficient for now. We think we understand how the men of iron were subverted and are confident that we can avoid the same fate - but, never the less, we urge caution on this matter, and would like to keep her inside our shielding as much as possible and urge her to avoid the subject until we have better countermeasures.
Victan
-[ ] Yes: We bring him on board and tell him his job is to help us coordinate with the Aevon government and deceive the mechanicus, and not to pry into our secrets. If he does well at this, we can consider recruiting him to our crew more permanently.
Edit: More manufactories, slightly less improved stealth fighters. Hopefully we'll get another turn to pump out another batch.
-[ ] Research X2 (200+200=400 RP)
--[ ] Improved Passive Stealth (100 RP)
--[ ] Improved Stealth Fighters (100 RP, 25 BP, 5 CP)
--[ ] Machine spirit jamming (150 RP)
--[ ] Secrets of the Machine Spirits (Whatever's left over after we research everything else. Can sacrifice research to boost other things if necessary.)
-[ ] Construction Act 1 (1300 BP)
--[ ] Manufactory X4 (400 BP, 200 CP)
--[ ] Anti-Orbital Defenses, concealed (200 BP, 5 CP)
--[ ] Medium Void-shield Installation, concealed (700/2000 BP)
-[ ] Construction Act 2 (1500 BP)
--[ ] Medium Void-shield Installation, concealed (700 +1300/2000 BP, 50 CP)
--[ ] Improved Stealth Fighter X ?? (200 BP, ?? CP)
-[] Anexa passive action: Education - Roll to level, difficulty is 10+5xLevel
How do you treat your new acolytes among the Mechanicus?
You have some leftover effort from your existing action. You can get in touch with them and start one of the following for free.
-[] Promote
Teach them what they need to know to get ahead in the mechanicus. The least likely to backfire, but they'll be less loyal to you.
Least risky thing other than just cutting them off entirely. Kinda sad to not do more with them but I don't think we can aford the risk.
Anexa about Chaos
-[ ] We tell her how dangerous Chaos is, but also that we have countermeasures that seem to be sufficient for now. We think we understand how the men of iron were subverted and are confident that we can avoid the same fate - but, never the less, we urge caution on this matter, and would like to keep her inside our shielding as much as possible and urge her to avoid the subject until we have better countermeasures.
Victan
-[ ] Yes: We bring him on board and tell him his job is to help us coordinate with the Aevon government and deceive the mechanicus, and not to pry into our secrets. If he does well at this, we can consider recruiting him to our crew more permanently.
Edit: More manufactories, slightly less improved stealth fighters. Hopefully we'll get another turn to pump out another batch.
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- Location
- United Kingdom
There's no reason we can't do both, just prepare the missiles then send them up as late as we can to reduce the chance they get seen.
It's a hundred metres tall, so putting it underground minimises the chance it gets seen.
We could do it, though it'd mean removing one manufactory to have enough BP left over after the Maga-pult is built to afford 500 missiles, but I'd rather have the void shield and fighters now honestly.
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
Resource constraints and discovery risks. We need not only to research and build the missiles, but also to build the lanuch capacity to put them in orbit, then amass them in orbit and hope they aren't noticed - where as we already have the underground spaceports for the stealth fighters, and as long as we keep them underground, there's no risk of discovery.
Edit: As for sending them up late, that means we need more launch capacity, cause we're sending them up in less time, and it strains the stealth for our launch capacity. Still seems questionable. And again, they do nothing to help us with anything besides the kill sats.
Probably not necessary - we only need to keep it hidden for a few turns, which the concealment should be sufficient for.
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We can build the lift + missiles + yeet to Orbit in 1 turn.
@Neablis
How many sats can we destroy per stealth fighter assuming we don't want to risk the Mechanicus triggering the sats as soon they realize sats are going missing?
(Don't want them to nuke the rest of the planet even if Vita would be safe)
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
I'd assume 1, given that the Stealth fighter explicitedly notes it's not stealthy during it's entire attack run.
Insult Everyone!
Master of Evil but bad at it.
- Location
- Right behind you~
We can probably keep them off from pulling the trigger too hard so long as we tease em with STCs. It'd totally drive em crazy. On one hand: massive threat, on the other: massive riches. Should slow em down enough to kill their WoMD's off, prob. Especially so long as we keep our infiltration of their net secret.
If we tease Thalya with a hint that there's a lot of smaller fragments of the ship to uncover on the planet... Well, they'll be really reluctant. At least long enough for us to plan and find ways to deal.
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- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
More than that, I'm sure. Especially if we field the improved stealth fighters, as I hope to. Main question will be how *fast* we can shoot down the kill sats, compared to the speed at which they come into range to shoot us.