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[KiwiOui]

I vote for weapons.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Weapons should be our current pirority if we manage to understand how they work we can build defenses against it.

[andrea]

I was thinking: we have a small cache of alloys, allowing a single national project using them.

Our main problem here is that we lack the technical and/or scientific knowledge to do most things that would be useful against aliens, but alien alloys are the holy grail of material engineering: great resistance to everything alloys, room temperature superconductors,  etc.
This means that if we pick a design with a very simple design but which wasn't used at the time ( or even now) because materials were not suitable, we could achieve a great leap in our tech.

My idea is railguns. The underlying physics is trivial and well established. the design is very simple. The problems are rail wear and energy storage/release. We can solve the first using alien alloy rails and the second with superconducting magnetic energy storage ( basically, a coil of superconductors with tons of current going through it, storing energy in the magnietic field), which is made significantly easier by having room temperature superconductors available.
Power generation would be supplied by the quite inelegant solution of mounting it near a power plant. or a suitably large generation.

If we mount the railgun on a turret ( power generation stays on the ground clearly), we could have a decent chance of shooting down some UFOs, before they destroy or avoid it.

considering that the US navy proposed railgun was going to use 64 MJ and that SMES is extremely efficient, a well sized power plant should allow several projectiles per minute ( on the power side alone. I suspect that the power transmission from plant to SMES is going to limit us). A railgun might have a range of a couple hundred kilometers ( after at least one full turn, or maybe one design and 2 revisions) and accuracy problems may be "solved" by a small timed explosive charge on the projctile turning it into a cloud of fast hot pieces of metal in flight.


So, I believe this could be a good chance to start fighting the air war. advanced weapon, easy engineering suitable to the time thanks to alien alloy use, great performance.  Can't think of reasons why we would not be able to build one with what I have at hand, as long as we can shape the alloys somewhat. We could build only one, sure, but with the range of a good railgun we can protect a sizeable area with it.

With that in mind, I switch my vote to Alien alloys II

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

My understanding was that the required tech was Alien Alloy I: we need to research phase to be able to use alloys.

The requirement was not Alien Alloys I.  The message is there because the required research has not been completed.

[andrea]

hm. pity.
In the game, for advanced alloy use and production you needed research into alien power source, but I am not sure we can learn much of use right now.

[Sheb]

My understanding was that the required tech was Alien Alloy I: we need to research phase to be able to use alloys.

The requirement was not Alien Alloys I.  The message is there because the required research has not been completed.

Oh, ok. I'll switch to Weapons then.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

I think the power generator would provide better results due to the fact that we're operating on an army and nation level rather than a global guerrilla warfare level. The power source will allow for vehicles and possibly artillery that are able to begin to compete with the invaders.

I also think that next turn we should try to dive into computers because we'll need that understanding to be able to do deeper things with Alien tech.

[andrea]

well, weapons may have a better chance to yield something useful soon. power source seems complex. However, we might discover ways to use the power source to work on the alloys... ( forget using them as engines for at least a few years)

[andrea]

power source

[Wolfhunter107]

Power Source

[Funk]

Power Source

+1

[KiwiOui]

Current Votes:
Weapons-5
Power Source-4

I think weapons will give us something to actually look into. See how they fight, etc.

[Kashyyk]

Power source

[Aseaheru]

 Figuring out their powersourses may help us develop aircraft to poke holes in them, power ships, cities, etc. Depending on how it works it may also give us some better explosive compounds. they may also give us computers, we dunno.

 Weapons, depending on how theirs work, may give us a host of useful techs, like power manipulation, magnetic containment, plastics, etc. Computers are also a possibility from them. We will almost certainly not be able to copy their guns from it except for possibly extremely shot-ranged (like, under a meter) things. Still, those may be useful for, say, cutting through their metals.

 Alloys would give us a hand in armor techs, defeating their armor, and generic materials research

 Autopsies would mostly just give ussome help killing them and figuring out weaknesses, but could also help medical tech and possibly a way to communicate.

[andrea]

alloys would be great, but sadly we can't research them yet.
I agree that weapons and power sources are the best ones, still not sure which one would yield better results.

By the way, what do you think of my railgun idea?