Durabys
A Cheshire Exile
Are you thinking about making a chain of Jump drives, with modified jump signatures, that allow sending information back into the past via IR pulsed morse code? Because that is what I am thinking.
Frozen in Carbonite
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Growing Horizons: Inner Sphere - Quest
- Thread starter Warringer
- Start date
Which breaks causality in pretty major ways, and as such does not work.Are you thinking about making a chain of Jump drives, with modified jump signatures, that allow sending information back into the past via IR pulsed morse code? Because that is what I am thinking.
Neither Pirates, not Comstar actually know we got the Belisarius. Its hidden away in 61 Virginis, in a dedcated dock that was specially build for it.
Durabys
A Cheshire Exile
Did we at least get something out of doing that boondoggle? Like expertise and dice bonus for researching Capital and Super Capital type ship frames?
Its nothing we didn't do hundreds of times before. There a O'Neill cylinders at Sol, Beta Hydri and 61 Virginis. So large structures like that are nothing new.
I'm still awaiting the day we ride in with a fleet of FTL Raytans. Well, actually I'm dreading it, since the day we feel the need to mobilise our mobile area denial space fortress en masse is the day we're facing an existence level threat.
That said, we would be arriving in style.
Also, if we can stick FTL on a Raytan, we can conceivable have fully self sufficient FTL space colony arcs, which is always a a good emergency evacuation plan to have.
Blade4
Apathetic Marine
Actually more like repeatedly jumping a huge ship with every sensor we can make and then some to record it and study the data to try to make a theory of why it is seemingly breaking causality. Theories can potentially be proven and have spin off applications. But this is all speculative work for probable late game. Still ability to squirt messages a few hours back into the past or stranger applications...Are you thinking about making a chain of Jump drives, with modified jump signatures, that allow sending information back into the past via IR pulsed morse code? Because that is what I am thinking.
Edit: If a heat signurture can appear in the past because of something we do with our equipment there should be a way to manipulate that signature some way that can be used to set up a basic digital stream. At least in theory.
Still could have domestic terrost try something. Or before they joined Russia try for it. Hell we have markedly little internal troubles.
Dude we are researching the ship that will give us that right now.
Though actually bonuses probable wont be till later till we get very good at building ships that size but thinking about it I bet IS warship size ships will practically obsolete many of our current ship types. Or at least redefine them. Current light and mediums might be utterly obsolete or only really useful as close air support or support "dropships". Bombardment class might be refitted as sub cap escorts or fill what light medium craft do now.I am thinking it hearlds the increasing of our borders. Oh that's your system? Sorry not Sorry our hundred plus Raytans in the system say otherwise.
Something to think about. No need at moment but later we might ship out colonies with orders to go a few thousand ly into the dark then build new civilizations.
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Please stop giving the QM bad ideas
In Civ 4 or 5 I liked to send out great artists to build great artworks (or culture bomb) near any contested areas until the nearest relevant city changed allegiances. So… not a fan of gunboat diplomacy.
But what you said before, about that single nation of a planet joining us, in retrospect you're right. Unless their neighbours are utter dicks, this would just result in a lopsided development, where we're more in the red initially before their part of the (future joining deal) pays dividends for us.
Blade4
Apathetic Marine
I don't know just to spice stuff up I would in his shoes roll a d20 or three for various potential events. Good bad events on a table high to low perhaps?Please stop giving the QM bad ideas
Mind you most all our neighbors especially the houses have been around a very long time. We aint countering those cultures easily if it all. And they can have a very might makes right attitude because of centuries of war. Even the Lyrans can very much be assholes. The current leadership just happens to prefer diplomacy if possible because she is sick of war but push to shove she is a very dangerous fighter. Not saying we should declare war on everyone but we should make it very clear we are not soft targets and it is far preferable to trade or talk with us then engage in traditional cattle raid style warfare they are used to.
I'm running a 1d100 for random events. Speaking of which... I need to update it... Most events are not really useful anymore.
Durabys
A Cheshire Exile
After the first attempted cattle raid, we should FTL drop a hundred or so of our multi-kilometer knock-off WarShips into the low orbit of the capital world of the offending party...while completely ignoring hundreds of light-years of 'buffer' systems, the KF Limit, limits of jump range even with LF batteries, that WarShips haven't existed for centuries and all other things that the House Lords thought until then were hard rules for everyone, some even for the vaunted Terran Hegemony.
Cue pants-shitting terror and massive confusion about us not going to conquer them on the spot and that we are only demanding that they cease and desist or else.
Cue the responsible local planetary lord getting executed.
I believe that even today, a couple of thousand of our combat craft coming from nowhere into an L1 point should be enough.
Well, we still need the thousands of our combat craft for the O'somethingberserkers, which is why we'd 'only' send the warships they most easily recognise as warships to their porch.
And one or two FTL Raytan we could spare. You know, a combination of mobile supply base, area denial, and yandere camp follower, in a way.
This reminds me, how typical is interstellar space as a staging ground? I only read about JumpPoint jumps, which is mostly for convenience, and I suspect pirates and black ops could have bases in deep space, but I didn't note any cases where a fleet gathered deep between inhabited systems and jumped in when they had the desired size, only of them gathering in systems and jumping from JumpPoint to JumpPoint.
Durabys
A Cheshire Exile
HAHA. Inner Sphere and BT!verse have limits on their KF drives in the form that charging their drives from a reactor and not via a Solar Sail can and will blow up your vessel eventually.
Not such a limit for us and it will cause headsplosions in the Inner Sphere.
It is the Inner Sphere that is limited to using in-system jump points as staging grounds and a, therefore, a semblance of 'borders' and 'defensive frontline' "IN SPACE!" has been slowly developped over the centuries. Not us. We can stage and jump around in deep dark space between stars how ever we like.
Suddenly we invalidate the Houses' entire strategic depth defense doctrine that has been in use since the first jump drives were developed. Many rectal shitplossions will happen once they realize this: Their size, population, and the number of planets WILL NOT PROTECT THEM and their strategically important planets, installations and industry are now equally vulnerable as would be a border March.
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We don't even need to use Jump drives at all... HFEGs are quite useful on their own, withoutthat perksy early warning of that warm spot developing before you jump somewhere...
Durabys
A Cheshire Exile
Yeah. They are completely shitting themselves.
On other news/fronts. If the Taurians didn't shit the bed during the Jihad and proven themselves as rabid animals that need to be put down for the good of the community, I would have happily given them some choice picks of our tech.
[X] Network Extension:
The worlds of New St. Andrews and Niops appear to be good cancidates for the extension of the Network.
Time: 2 turns, Chance of success: 60%, Reward: Network extension into New St. Andrews and Niops
[X] Hypercom III:
With two FTL communication system avaiable, why not collect the full set? Most of the work for the Hyperwave comm system has already been done, so it should all just be a matter of completing the research.
Time: 2 turns, Chance of success: 60%, Reward: Hyperwave Communication System
The worlds of New St. Andrews and Niops appear to be good cancidates for the extension of the Network.
Time: 2 turns, Chance of success: 60%, Reward: Network extension into New St. Andrews and Niops
[X] Hypercom III:
With two FTL communication system avaiable, why not collect the full set? Most of the work for the Hyperwave comm system has already been done, so it should all just be a matter of completing the research.
Time: 2 turns, Chance of success: 60%, Reward: Hyperwave Communication System
You can understand them to a degree... If you are extremely paranoid about your neighbours.
Blade4
Apathetic Marine
Might be a good idea and might change dice around a bit? Seems like if anything have almost to easy a time with things falling into place. Hard to start up a debate or different choices when they are no real different choices just variations of which project to do next. But then that's not completely fair. We do getting branching choices. Just seems one is usually obviously superior so why argue about it?
Yeah no. Yes making sure don't fuck with us but such a extreme and humilating action is lable to make us enemies. People really don't like it to discover they are out gunned and exist at others pleasure. That and we need to build all those ships to. We might have the ships to pull of something like that but not without stripping our defenses bare.
Actually there could totally be interstellar civilizations that just see no reason to talk to ground dweller civilizations. The most known is the belters in Sol. They live in the outer region of the system and Oort belt taking advantage of fact that jumpdrives only care if you are jumping in or out of a gravity field and out past Jupiter or Saturn Sol is not a issue so can jump freely around. Most people are terrified of jumping to a dead system if something breaks down but nothing stops you from building out in the void between stars or systems with no habitable worlds.
Who knows a lot of their actions were because the devs needed them to be fucktards or they could have got strong enough to threaten nearby houses. The transition to dark ages involved reducing the number of factions a lot.
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Well, it does provide a useful bait. Have a couple Jump Ships quickly jump into and out of a jump point (or pirate point), leading an enemy to prepare for an imminent attack on that front, only to be snookered when the main fleet actually transitions into another location. Intersperse this tactic with a couple attacks where we actually follow through on the false lead and do attack from that jump point and we force an enemy to split their forces.
It's not paranoia if you're proven right.
Soft disagree.
If we always had obviously superior choices, we wouldn't have dragged our heels on projects like Project Byzantium, or almost on Von Neumann. I feel like more often than not we have the choice between immediately and mediately advantageous choices (Operation Tortuga Down vs Extended Anti-Piracy Patrols), and the occasional long haul/odds option. Like, I want HFEG Jump, but I have to weigh a probable loss (P(240+12d100≥300)=30%) there against blocking the slot for 12 turns. Heck, if we're unlucky and repeat that action until it succeeds we may be looking at 40+ turns here. Narratively it makes sense, 10 years for merging two different approaches to FTL seems like a good guesstimate, but from game perspective? No.
Or have 2 Further Survey missions to map all of our survey bubble. With 65% chance of success for 4 turns and a bonus of +10 each turn every single turn has good odds (P(1d100+10≥35) = 76%), and the overall odds of success for the mission itself are really good (only 1 in 60 odds of failing that mission). Even arguing outside of the safety net of good odds, narratively speaking we know of 9 worlds in that region, but the rewards lay between 12 and 52 systems (10+2d20); even if Warringer included the unsettled systems among that count, there're good odds looking at another dozen systems.
(Frankly, given the reward I assume Warringer rolled the 10+2d20 beforehand for the total amount of systems and introduces them as the individual rolls succeed)
Durabys
A Cheshire Exile
@Blade4
I also have a suspicion that researching and using the HFEG Jump Drive is like researching and using the Psionic Jump Drive in Stellaris...it puts us onto a countdown for when the Unbidden, or in our case, Prometheus' and Jerat Emperors' "Siblings", come to visit us for a little chat.
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Blade4
Apathetic Marine
Mind you this is a known and well played tactic for the houses that has only really fallen out of general use because of shear reduction of the IS and actual can still be used in limited degree. As they recover tactics like this become viable once more.
Preach it.
Eh I am probable complaining over nothing. We are just now leaving the prologue just feels like we are on easy mode so far making me wonder when a real challenge actually appears.
I rather doubt it given vastly different background and higher dimension creatures eeemingly being chill if not outright bros. That and...
Yeah we are just now getting to first act I think and this game will probable be around a good while.Oh... The 'Endgame Crisis' is already set in stone... Just not the date. We uave not even reached the 'Midgame Crisis'...
You know... I have a hard time at the moment, thinking up new R&D topics that won't get us wanked out of all proportions within ten years...
Durabys
A Cheshire Exile
Ask Deepthroat for help on SB. He did an "SB in Original!XCOM" council game back in the early 2010s. The game had a fucked up tech progression because he added research projects that increase research speed...so we kinda did those first and had a runaway technological singularity on our hands before we even fought the first Aliens and their tiny UFO's.
You can always remove one of the research slots, or get granular on bonuses; instead of +5 a given tech grants only +1. Or make the research actions all take a long time, effectively taking up the slots. If you feel writing a dozen paragraphs about a given tech's development is boring for you to do or us to read, you can always limit yourself to writing something when particular good or bad rolls happen and otherwise just say "Research on the technology runs along nicely. The researchers expect to be ready to present their results in a year or two."