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[10ebbor10]

I added some more details.

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

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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 anything we can't defeat.
      * Always attack from ambushes, both dug in, or from the trees, or stuff like that.
* 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're capable, construct siege engines.

Development
* IIRC, we're a bronze age technology civilizations. Well, let's start using it. Design bronze weaponry and armor.
* Try to develop ranged weaponry of some sort.
* 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. This will cause some ecological problems in the area, most likely driving any wildlife in the area to their food supply.
       - 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. What we're looking for is the largest herbivoric creature that lives in packs. Massive carnivores, if we can find them, are good too.
       - Long term goal: Trample the defenses.

* Plan: Down with the Wall
       - Current implementation:See war
       - Long term: We sabotage the wall fortifications on a truly large scale, digging underneath them across the entire length. We collapse this when we attack, causing the entire wall to suddenly shift and crumbly, or perhaps even fall over in it's entirety.

* Plan: Know what's going on
       - Current implementation: Examine the surroundings. Look for nearby hills, forests, and stuff like that.
       - Long term: We'll see when we know what's going on.

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

+1 to everything in the war, development, and everything else EXCEPT some of the long term plans.

For example were hiding inside these forests right? Why would we burn them down and put us/an possibly show entrances to our hives to our enemy? or at the very worst burn ourselves too? -1 to forest fire and scorched earth.

However, if we can get carnivores to migrate into our area then that would be awesome to keep the humans off-balance. We know that they came from the sky and that they can innovate when it comes to defending themselves.

+1 to knowing what's going around and seeing what else they build and any other plans i'm to lazy to mention.

+1

We're not burning down the forest. What we're doing is creating a firebreak between the part of the forest that contains our hives, and the part of the forest that doesn't. Same for the Scorched Earth plan, we pillage their immediate surroundings, leave them with nothing to survive. Meanwhile, burning the forest can take out a large part of their force, and surprise the rest for an underground attack.

Both are pretty much worst case plans, whose preparing phases will have no bad things happen to us. While the full execution will be damaging to us, there's no harm in preparing it.

Besides, we mostly live underground.


Remember, our closest hive is 3 days marching away from the enemy, and our troops move fast. So that could be almost 300-500 km away.

[3man75]

I added some more details.

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

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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 anything we can't defeat.
      * Always attack from ambushes, both dug in, or from the trees, or stuff like that.
* 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're capable, construct siege engines.

Development
* IIRC, we're a bronze age technology civilizations. Well, let's start using it. Design bronze weaponry and armor.
* Try to develop ranged weaponry of some sort.
* 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. This will cause some ecological problems in the area, most likely driving any wildlife in the area to their food supply.
       - 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. What we're looking for is the largest herbivoric creature that lives in packs. Massive carnivores, if we can find them, are good too.
       - Long term goal: Trample the defenses.

* Plan: Down with the Wall
       - Current implementation:See war
       - Long term: We sabotage the wall fortifications on a truly large scale, digging underneath them across the entire length. We collapse this when we attack, causing the entire wall to suddenly shift and crumbly, or perhaps even fall over in it's entirety.

* Plan: Know what's going on
       - Current implementation: Examine the surroundings. Look for nearby hills, forests, and stuff like that.
       - Long term: We'll see when we know what's going on.

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

+1 to everything in the war, development, and everything else EXCEPT some of the long term plans.

For example were hiding inside these forests right? Why would we burn them down and put us/an possibly show entrances to our hives to our enemy? or at the very worst burn ourselves too? -1 to forest fire and scorched earth.

However, if we can get carnivores to migrate into our area then that would be awesome to keep the humans off-balance. We know that they came from the sky and that they can innovate when it comes to defending themselves.

+1 to knowing what's going around and seeing what else they build and any other plans i'm to lazy to mention.

+1

We're not burning down the forest. What we're doing is creating a firebreak between the part of the forest that contains our hives, and the part of the forest that doesn't. Same for the Scorched Earth plan, we pillage their immediate surroundings, leave them with nothing to survive. Meanwhile, burning the forest can take out a large part of their force, and surprise the rest for an underground attack.

Both are pretty much worst case plans, whose preparing phases will have no bad things happen to us. While the full execution will be damaging to us, there's no harm in preparing it.

Besides, we mostly live underground.


Remember, our closest hive is 3 days marching away from the enemy, and our troops move fast. So that could be almost 300-500 km away.

Okay i guess. ill take off my minus 1 to them IF we need to do said things.

But we seriously need to find a way to damage there supply, food, water, or SOMETHING.

[cheesemcmuffin88]

I say we attempt to capture a patrol. We can assume that our soldiers are strong enough to rip there weapons a part and i would assume two to three workers could manage to corral each human.

Also if we are capable of evolving ourself we could try and evolve some sort of heavy soldier type deal. Take a soldier add thicker chitin instead of having cutting claws/talons give him very wide broad claws he can hold in front of himself as a shield. Basically a walking piece of cover

[GavJ]

A couple deductions about our circumstances:

1) People were asking if we have native enemies on this planet, or ever did.  The answer should clearly be YES, since we have evolved a warrior caste. A unanimous hive mind has no reason for warriors if it didn't have enemies. And they seem like pretty vicious and advanced warriors that take up a lot of our egg proportion, so probably we have or had quite ferocious and persistent enemies, at that. Therefore, I think it is reasonable to expect all manner of military strategy and technology-level-appropriate military gizmos, etc.

2) That being said, armor is almost definitely not amongst our knowledge base. For one, we have exoskeletons and chitin is almost as strong as bronze anyway, so it makes good sense that we haven't invented it. But more importantly, in the story, our soldiers didn't realize that the Xenos' armor was armor, we thought it was part of their bodies. If we had armor technology, we would never have made such a mistake.

So "make bronze armor" I don't think is an option, at least not without researching and learning the secrets of armor in general from Xeno artifacts brought back to the queens.

And bronze armor would be useless anyway. One Xeno's gun can apparently cut through a dozen soldiers merely in the time it takes us to run to him. They must be using some crazy machine railgun whatever. Bronze will be about as effective as butter.  And we would KNOW this, too, having observed the carnage of our troops and thus understanding how powerful their weapons must be, if not how they work.

And the making of all that buttery useless armor would make smoke and give our positions away as well as signalling to the xenos that we are more technologically advanced than they might suspect.

[3man75]

A couple deductions about our circumstances:

1) People were asking if we have native enemies on this planet, or ever did.  The answer should clearly be YES, since we have evolved a warrior caste. A unanimous hive mind has no reason for warriors if it didn't have enemies. And they seem like pretty vicious and advanced warriors that take up a lot of our egg proportion, so probably we have or had quite ferocious and persistent enemies, at that. Therefore, I think it is reasonable to expect all manner of military strategy and technology-level-appropriate military gizmos, etc.

2) That being said, armor is almost definitely not amongst our knowledge base. For one, we have exoskeletons and chitin is almost as strong as bronze anyway, so it makes good sense that we haven't invented it. But more importantly, in the story, our soldiers didn't realize that the Xenos' armor was armor, we thought it was part of their bodies. If we had armor technology, we would never have made such a mistake.

So "make bronze armor" I don't think is an option, at least not without researching and learning the secrets of armor in general from Xeno artifacts brought back to the queens.

And bronze armor would be useless anyway. One Xeno's gun can apparently cut through a dozen soldiers merely in the time it takes us to run to him. They must be using some crazy machine railgun whatever. Bronze will be about as effective as butter.  And we would KNOW this, too, having observed the carnage of our troops and thus understanding how powerful their weapons must be, if not how they work.

And the making of all that buttery useless armor would make smoke and give our positions away as well as signalling to the xenos that we are more technologically advanced than they might suspect.

+1 what we need is something like the hunter of L4d who also has the ability to infect and or poison its pray. That's IF were even able to do such a thing with our biology.

[The Froggy Ninja]

Adding a layer of bronze over our chitin would still help.

[3man75]

Adding a layer of bronze over our chitin would still help.

To me it's like wearing a big bag full of paper. It's going to weigh down or dudes who seem to already be slow enough to shoot and not stop bullets. I say again something small, high jumping, Fast, hard to it (better yet hard to see), and with the ability to cause Post-Damage is essential.

[GiglameshDespair]

Somethign like a giant rhino may be effective as a force multiplier. A skull thicker than God to absorb shots, redundant organ systems, and sixty tons of adrenaline to keep it going. It would act liek a shield and battering ram, with the ordinary warriors close behind: it would absorb the fire, allowing our warriors to get in close and slice'n'dice. The sheer mass of the creature would give it anti-vehicle capabilities, as it could ram and turn them over for warriors to break into.

[cheesemcmuffin88]

Im telling you we need to breed walking tank's if we are going for war. We can thicken our chitin/exoskeleton give them large extremely thick claws that also could allow them to burrow or at the very least kick up large amounts of dirt. We could give them large rear legs that would be less armored then there front allowing them to sort of do a bull rush not only could they provide cover they could also be effective  offensive weapons.

[cheesemcmuffin88]

On second thought gigalemesh's design may function better.

[GavJ]

Not that any of this is really necessary detail for the story, but just because it's fun:



Redundant organs are more expensive and probably less effective (a second heart still bleeds enough to kill you) than just putting all the important organs in the back.

Front: intestines, bladder, pancreas, liver, etc. stuff that keeps it alive day to day but isn't needed immediately to finish an attack charge, and a metric **** ton of exoskeleton and cartilege. Ideally interleaving layers of skeleton and cartilege but I don't know if we know enough to do that.
Back: heart, lungs, most of the central nervous system, highly bleeding things like kidneys, sensory organs*

*Eyes would need to be in the front, everything else can go in back. Eyes aren't terribly mission critical, though, as it's big enough to crush small roots and things and won't trip, and the hive mind can tell it which general direction to go, since it will be escorted in battle by all the infantry anyway. Eyes are also small and cheap to grow, and you could just have 20 of them to allow it to continue seeing in a hail of gunfire, too.

Body shape: roughly the shape of an Avatar from Eve:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But, you know, with (several) short legs, and a little shorter in the back. And the frontal plate would be cut off a bit on the bottom to allow ground clearance.

[3man75]

Not that any of this is really necessary detail for the story, but just because it's fun:



Redundant organs are more expensive and probably less effective (a second heart still bleeds enough to kill you) than just putting all the important organs in the back.

Front: intestines, bladder, pancreas, liver, etc. stuff that keeps it alive day to day but isn't needed immediately to finish an attack charge, and a metric **** ton of exoskeleton and cartilege. Ideally interleaving layers of skeleton and cartilege but I don't know if we know enough to do that.
Back: heart, lungs, most of the central nervous system, highly bleeding things like kidneys, sensory organs*

*Eyes would need to be in the front, everything else can go in back. Eyes aren't terribly mission critical, though, as it's big enough to crush small roots and things and won't trip, and the hive mind can tell it which general direction to go, since it will be escorted in battle by all the infantry anyway. Eyes are also small and cheap to grow, and you could just have 20 of them to allow it to continue seeing in a hail of gunfire, too.

Body shape: roughly the shape of an Avatar from Eve:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But, you know, with (several) short legs, and a little shorter in the back. And the frontal plate would be cut off a bit on the bottom to allow ground clearance.

A herd of those guys could do massive damage if followed on by a massive attack via warriors and some workers with bronze shields and swords.

Thoughts?

[GavJ]

followed on by a massive attack via warriors

Yeah for sure. Even more so than that - attack isn't just followed, it is simultaneous. 3 or 4 Warriors run along with it in the first place, hiding in the overlapping "eaves" of the frontal plate.  In addition to reserves obviously further back following up.

with bronze shields and swords.

Swords seem pretty pointless since we have sharp-ass claws and high strength already.
Shields I dunno, certainly sounds more potentially useful than body armor. You would want a wooden shield with bronze plating - much lighter and actually more effective (this is what real "bronze" shields were historically). But the things that a wood and bronze plated riot shield would be useful against (shrapnel from grenades, for instance, or shotguns) it doesn't sound like we have encountered yet from the Xenos. So even if the humans (probably) have them, we shouldn't know that they do. We only have seen their railgun things, which shields probably wouldn't help with.

A woode and bronze shield MIGHT actually still be effective, though, if used to extend the size of the ramming dude's frontal plate - in that usage, it would be angled steeply toward the enemy, and could very possibly deflect railgun fire. And its weight wouldn't be a big issue since the ram probably runs slower than soldiers alone would anyway.

Once you get to your target, you drop the shields and go berserker slashy slashy full speed at the surrounding Xenos.

[GiglameshDespair]

Why the insistence on bronze-working? Why would we want to use workers at all when we have large quantities of warriors already? At the moment the xenos don't know if we're sentient or not, or basically oversized ants. As soon as we use metal working, it's clear we're a free-thinking threat and will be responded to as such. Bronze won't help us here: certainly not against high tech weaponry.

Chargers just for the tip of the spear to allow the more fragile warriors to get among them - they attack together or the point is lost. Think of them as more shields rather than direct damage-dealers. Ideally, we'll also want some kind of flying units to act as scouts, harassers, and possibly bombers if we can grow sacks of noxious chemicals. Our forces are incomplete. But for the time being, we can focus on making the chargers.

Shields - we could use the Xenos for that. If we can gather any dead xenos warriors, we could strip their 'skins' or even just use the corpses as shields. Using bodies in such a manner would also be an effective terror tactic.

[cheesemcmuffin88]

I say no to bronze anything for the time until we try and negotiate but upping our military might is also a good idea. Perhaps we could develop some specialized warrior/worker hybrids to tend to our new heavier beasts. Perhaps the size of our workers but with a similar biology to our soldier's instead of having claws they could have primitive graspers allowing them to grab on and ride the side of our larger beasts so they can immediately take advantage of the weakness in the enemy formation.