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[10ebbor10]

Ok, let's think about this logically for a moment.

First, I kindly request more information from the GM. So far, the only think we know is that the enemy base has a wall, and is near a forest. I want to know the surroundings of the base, if it's on high ground, the closest high ground if it isn't, whether or not there's a nearby river, and some other things.

And, on the defensive side. What is the layout of our main hive tunnels. How deep are they, how hard are they to defend. Are they natural, or are they actually created by us.


Next, let's analyze the update.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The soldiers watched from the shadows, as the Xenos quickly started running around their land, turning on machines, working on things. It was like they had awoken from some slumber.

We learn that the base is visible from the forest.

Many of them started working on a large wall outside, while the ones holding the large, black rectangles stood guard. The soldiers took this information, and digested it, starting to raid at night, and sometimes, at day, to keep the Xenos surprised. Most of the raids were of little or no point, with almost all of them ending in no blood shed on either side. However, one raid on the construction site itself proved very valuable. The Xenos were lazy, and not expecting a brave raid on such a central point of their operations. The unarmed workers proved almost incapable of defending themselves, and the brave soldiers killed 20 of them before being forced to retreat by the armed guards, losing 5 of their own.

Raid: Succes
Capture Xeno: Failure

The next night, 100 of the soldiers gathered outside the now-finished wall, and stopped. Even with the loyalty to the queens bred into them, even with them barely even knowing what fear is, they stopped. Some would say it was a tactical move, that they did not attack because it would be a waste of lives. But in the end, it was fear. Fear affects everything, from the biggest giant, to the smallest microbe. On that day, facing that high wall, brimming with gun turrets and, to the Aliens, the embodiment of death, the Fearless felt fear.

Well, 3 options.
1) Our soldiers are afraid of heights, therefore afraid of the wall.
2) Our soldiers prove cunningly smart, being able to correlate the turrets (which they had never seen in operation before) with the guns, thereby analyzing that they would be annihilated.
3) The Xenos managed to hijack our biochemistry

Edit: Also, there's no reason at all for fear to affect our forces. It's an evolutionary thing that boosts a creature's chance to survive. Warriors don't procreate, so they don't need to survive.

At the same time, workers burrowed under their feet, digging small tunnels they could collapse at will. They could not dig directly under the wall, due to it's foundations, but they dug all around it, providing a very good incentive to not expand any further.

This implies that we can't dig through stone, and that the cavern are all natural. Quite a setback, really.

The queens, meanwhile, got to work laying eggs. By the end of the next couple of days, 2500 Aliens had hatched, with 500 of them being soldiers, and all the eggs were replaced by new ones.

The absence of a new queen implies that the ratios are chance, rather than a constant thing.

Now, let's analyse the proposed actions.

Spoiler: Actions (click to show/hide)

Raid more. Take their weapons. We will learn to fight fire with fire.

Brave, but I'm afraid it won't work. The wall know surrounds our base, and our soldiers refuse to attack it.

Devour all the warriors who failed to attack.

This seems wasteful, but think: we cannot afford to let our troops fear the enemy more than they fear us. They will obey, because currently, our only method of attack is rushing at our foes, trying to get into melee, and if they won't do that these xenos will win.

Depending on how the hivemind works, this makes sense, or it doesn't.

Also continue to expand the tunnels around the Xeno "fortress" in case we need more collapsements.

No problem with this.

Also see what we can do about stealing equipment be they weapons from there armed gaurds or tools from there workers or even some machines.

I was under the impression that the entire base was surrounded, a few attacks at patrols outside the wall won't be problematic, and will help tremendously..

No, instead let's innovate. Have lets say 25 workers set up crude catapalt(s) and trow boulders at the xeno patrols around. Then while the humans respond the workers will run away into the tunnels around the Xeno fortress PLUS when the humans come to look they'll be greeted by a 50 warriors who will jump them. Do this at least 3 times to REALLY put the fear of our EMPIRE into those Xenos!

If the above is pulled off right we can make away with corpses for further study and equipment. If they don't attack us at ALL we can start trowing boulders at there buildings that are not inside the fortress. thoughts?

I don't think we can do catapults actually. IIRC, we have bronze age technology. We don't have bows, and the early catapults were merely oversized bows.

Also, IIRC, all buildings are in their fortress.

I still think we need a forward outpost maybe even one that can support a new queen incase one hatched

The one were expanding near there fortress could be an option (SUPER dangerous because if captured they would know all the cards in our hands.)

Yeah, I don't think we want to have such a thing happen. Besides, there's no real benefit. I mean, reinforcements arrive 2 days sooner, but that's all.

Spoiler: Proposed aliums (click to show/hide)

Warrior Subcaste with stronger armor

+Stronger, might be able to resist gunshots
- Slow

Fearless warriors that we can throw away against enemy fortifications.

+ Swarm techniques
- We have no current situation where throwing away forces is a good thing

An alien capable of blowing itself up.

+ Something they will never expect
- Close range (where will already beat the humans)
- Non re-useable

A worker capable of extruding a strong acid, possible propelling these globs over short distance.

+ Our first ranged Alien
+ Our first anti-armor alien
+ We get to dig through stone, something we apparently couldn't do before.

- Probably weak in combat
- Acid needs time to take effect

An alien capable of flight.

+ A whole new dimension for attacks
+ We get to attack their air units. (They came from the sky, it's logical for us to assume they can fly)
- Probably weaker than standard flying aliens.

Composite Suggestions, though mostly my own. Feel free to adjust as nessecairy.

War
* Raid enemy patrols outside their borders. Try to bring one back alive this time. No Xenoes should be able to leave their compound. (Always attack from ambushes). Collapse the ground under any vehicles.
* Continue digging efforts. Try to go underneath the foundations rather than through. (Win-Win. Either the wall collapses, or we go underneath)
* Try to find any scraps of their technology. Tell our troops that they leave nothing after a successful attack. Take all weaponry.
* Create pitfall traps in the forest. (Hey, we have to do something with all the wood from plan Forest fire)
* If we can, execute the catapult plan.

Development
* IIRC, we're a bronze age technology civilizations. Well, let's start using it. Design bronze weaponry and armor.
* Create a new breed, the acidic worker. This has the greatest immediate benefit, allowing us to take out the wall, negate their strong armor and expand our bases.

Home

* Start creating new underground food deposits. Rather than carrying food and resources into the main hive, these will be stored here, and then carried to the main hive underground through collapsible tunnels.
* Expand our food reserves
* Continue breeding
* Create a new, near surface hive far away from the human base, ideally close to ore reserves and a forest. Here we will invest in new technology.
* Try to expand our bases with several, new, small underground caverns, deeper than our usual bases.
*Look for ores.

Long term

* Plan: Forest Fire.
       -Current implementation : Create a firebreak in the forest surrounding the enemy base.
       -Long term goal: The ability to light the forest on fire, causing smoke and fire to destroy the enemy base.

* Plan: Scorched Earth
       - Current implementation : Gather as much natural resources as we can out of their forests.
       - Long term goal: Cut the Xeno's of from all basic resources they might need

* Plan: Gaia's aid
       - Current implementation: Find the nearest large pack mega fauna*. After we have found it, we can laterattack it and drive it towards the Xeno base.
       - Long term goal: Trample the defenses.

* This should exist. The evolution of large ants heavily implies a higher than usual oxygen rate, and lower gravity.

Spoiler: Notes (click to show/hide)

Plan Flood has been abandoned, as it would damage us more than them, destroying our tunnels and such. Also, I don't think we can swim.

[GavJ]

PRIORITY #1 in my opinion:
- Getting a live guard or three.  We don't need to hem and haw about making fancy elaborate prisons. Come on. If we capture them, they will be disarmed, obviously, and not a threat. So we don't need a hole. We don't even WANT a hole, because we don't want to keep them in range of rescue efforts. We would want to immediately begin transporting them far away vaguely toward a research site elsewhere on the planet, which could easily be built WHILE they are being escorted (it could take weeks to get there!)

As hive aliens, we would probably assume that the Xenos have a hive mind by default, and so we wouldn't want that captive to observe anything critical without further consideration. But this plan doesn't allow it to, so it's fine. They've already seen our soldiers. And they know we tunnel. So the captive cannot transmit any new useful information by being escorted along non-descript tunnels by soldiers, as we decide in the meantime on further actions.

So all that being said, we want to capture prisoners NOW, lest we miss our opportunity and they completely protect themselves and learn too much from our raids to make themselves too hard to capture.

And we have no evidence of them immediately expanding quickly, we've tunneled around their wall. Invasion of our home hives is not an issue right now, so we can afford to be liberal with resources to gain a crucial initial advantage.

Throw massive resources at capturing soldier prisoners, complete with whatever they are carrying. Basically every soldier we've got close enough to the site minus a small handful to defend the workers if everything goes horribly awry.  Maybe 1,000-1,500 soldier by now might be on site? Send 800 of them.

Not in any sort of frontal assault, but rather, send ALL of them at the first isolated patrol of Xenos we see. 5 Xenos off by themselves somewhere + 800 of our soldiers, we should easily be able to capture all of them. No matter if they go guns blazing on us the whole time. They shouldn't kill more than 100-200.

Then afterward, devote nearly all surviving soldiers as possible to escorting the prisoners in forced march (as fast as possible without injuring them) in whatever the most confusing and difficult to follow direction is away from their camp.  Save a few more off to the side to also guard workers.

Worry about exactly what to do with them later, as long as we strike now and secure our prize.






PRIORITY #2
Go ahead and breach the wall right NOW.

We don't need any special magical technology to get through a silly stone fortification. We have bronze age technology. During the ENTIRETY of the bronze age, there was technology more than sufficient to breach a stone wall for creatures that can dig tunnels as easily as us:

1) You bash something hard at the stone until you get some cracks. Bronze chisels for many types of stone would be sufficient (including concrete, if that's what it is, that's just limestone basically in hardness, not that tough) Since this makes noise, but only requires a couple of workers, use our hive mind to strike simultaneously at like, 100 different places all around the wall, so they can't go defend against specific points. Which is assuming they even notice or care especially, which if they haven't cared about us digging tunnels around their entire fort, they probably won't.
2) You drive wooden wedges as far as you can into the cracks.
3) You soak the wedges with water repeatedly until they expand
4) This will crack the stone more deeply.
5) You drive the wedges in further....

Soon you will have big chunks of rock falling out. Whole process should only take 2-3 days to go through a 10-20 foot stone wall, I'd imagine, and in cramped conditions, you can only have a few workers per site anyway, so go ahead and do this at all 100 locations all around the wall.





(Note: guarding workers shouldn't require many soldiers. Just a couple per couple of workers actively working on the wall. We are way more dangerous than Xenos in close combat, remember, so if they come into our tunnels, they are dead meat, and their long range does nothing for them. So on DEFENSE, we need hardly any soldiers. So it's not a big risk to spend most of them on the prisoner priority)

[10ebbor10]

There hasn't been anything said about fancy prisons. All the infrastructure serves it's purpose, and none of that is to hold captives. The base close to the humans is there to allow us a relatively save staging point for future, massive attacks. The other base is there because metalworking tends to require fire, which results in easily detectable smoke. The other bases are for our future expansion. Besides, those workers weren't doing anything, so they're not being wasted.

Committing 1000 soldiers to an ambush might be problematic. We're good at stealth, but a force of 1000 ants probably won't go unnoticed. Still, spread them out through the forest, and try to grab humans if an opportunity comes along.

I'm actually against trying to breach the wall right now. I'd rather go underneath, and then spring a surprise attack, or undermine it so that it collapses, taking out the turrets. Most likely their turrets can't fire on the inside of the perimeter, so a surprise attack that bypasses the wall should be more useful, than punching through, which they might notice. If we, for some reason, can't go underneath nor undermine the foundations, then indeed we should start creating breaches as soon as possible.

[GavJ]

I'd rather go underneath, and then spring a surprise attack

Well obviously if we can do that (undermine wall), that's what we do, yes. It requires no metal or fanciness at all if possible. I was working under the apparent implication that we can't go under, which seemed clear from the last update to me at least.


Unrelated note:
(Please, by the way, in your updates, tell us how many we have at each relevant story location)

[GavJ]

To be clear, by "send 800 to capture some d00ds" I just mean "devote 800 to that task aimed at one or two patrols and don't spread them out needlessly." Not like... having 800 guys all sitting in one tree, lol.

For the actual ambush itself, if you can only hide 100, then hide 100 and start with that, sure. But
1) It's silly to go after 10 different groups of guards and suffer all of the initial long range losses from each and every group. one or two groups means we only lose one or two initial ranged weapon sets of losses before we nab them.
2) Also every time we fail an attempt, they learn more. Fewer, but more overwhelming attempts are ideal.
3) They may have crazy tricks up their sleeves, and we may only get one or two more chances before they stop doing patrols. If somehow they have a godlike weapon that can kill 200 soldiers at once we haven't seen before, we want the insurance of having 600 more guys to swarm the hell out of them and get our prizes anyway. At least close enough nearby to be able to outrun any escapees before they get back to the wall (100-200 yards away from the ambushers, say.) Fair?

[10ebbor10]

They have decent weapons that can kill 60 of us in a 200 versus 10 battle.

[GavJ]

Yeah whatever. Don't care if they kill 600 of us with an extra zero on the end if it means capturing prisoners.
Prisoners = hundreds of future polymerized rifleants, and game over.

[kaian-a-coel]

While I support taking prisoners, I doubt that it would lead to instant victory in any way.
I'm against overcommiting to this. Sending 800 warriors is way too many.

I support the creation of acid workers to dig that damned wall from under. The acid, spit in the eyes, is also a good defence over which we can later build more powerful warriors.

An advanced base near, but not too near, the Xeno base is a good thing, as is a far away retreat point.

I don't think that forest fires would be beneficial. The Xenos appear to prefer open ground.

[Varee]

Creation of new caste is queen jobs, it might lead to decrease wgg production though. I support capturing someone or atleast get a smaple of the xenos tech.

[10ebbor10]

Creation of new caste is queen jobs, it might lead to decrease wgg production though. I support capturing someone or atleast get a smaple of the xenos tech.

It might, but so far we don't have any forces shortages. We have to adapt in order to overcome the enemy, sending wave upon wave probably won't help.

[Worldmaster27]

I'll +1 ebbor's plans, for now at least.

[The Froggy Ninja]

I'll +1 ebbor's plans, for now at least.

+1

[3man75]

I think I found a way to bug those centos without losing troops.

Grab some workers and have them dip themselves in mud and then pick up wasps/bee nests (or equivalent) and toss it at their patrols. They won't die but it'll definitely be a good way to keep them from advancing too far plus those hit hardest will need to be taken care of.

In example 6 are on guard, 3 stung bad then the last three will have to carry there comrades back, thus winning the fight tactically.

[Varee]

Another idea
Can we let a worker slowly walk up to the xenos in a surreder posture to maybe get inside info on the xenos. Single lost wouldnt cause any affect anyway

[3man75]

Another idea
Can we let a worker slowly walk up to the xenos in a surreder posture to maybe get inside info on the xenos. Single lost wouldnt cause any affect anyway

Except there paranoid and could use the corpse to know more about us..minus 1