Suggestions for the Design Phase
Lamprey bug
This bug is the first member of our hive that can swim. Small in size and with as little of its body above water as possible, it should be quite hard to detect from enemy ships. Instead of the legs of our other bugs, it has fins that helps its movements in water. It keeps however 2 barbed arms that it uses to latch on enemy hulls. After latching on, it starts to chew through the hull below the water line with Emitic like grinding mandibles, making even a couple of those bugs deadly to an enemy ship if they can approach undetected.
A slightly modified version of andrea's idea from last turn, even a small fraction of our budget spent on these would allow us to strike at their supply lines and get us started on aquatic units.
Disrupter
A bug with a longer telepathic range, they broadcast psychic static on the human "channel" disrupting mages focus to ruin their spells and leading to a drop in effectiveness of other units as well.
Not only is longer telepathic range good for other things but this may open other avenues of subversive tactics.
Farming
Although still in the early stages we have begun to plant a portion of the seeds of plants we feed on and direct a portion of the workers to tend to them by removing less nutritious plants from the fields and fertilize the crops with our own waste. We have even started the process of artificial selection, though he humans have done much of the ground work on that already.
A relatively simple way to increase food production and possibly manpower cap, getting experience with artificial selection will help us in the future as well.
Trench and berm tactics
On the battle field workers dig simple trenches to hide in during the artillery phase to reduce casualties. by piling the spoil up the side facing the enemy with a shear side facing them and a sloping side facing us we further increases our defense and reduce the effectiveness of their cavalry.
I believe something a lot like this was posted by 10ebbor10 early on but out shown by other ideas, it is still a good idea though.
Symbiotic gene tailoring
Expanding on our Microbial Selectivity we can now influence the genome of our symbiotic microbes, although this is a largely conceptual technology, the ability to modify other organisms is a massive step in the direction of things like blood worms, carnivorous forests, and custom crops.
Closed circulatory system
An improvement over our open circulatory system, especially at larger sizes. Not only would this make Revanchers far more effective I also expect an increase in the effectiveness of all units, especially Soldiers.
Long range eyes
By modifying our eye structure such that a single ommatidium is much larger and has a concave sheet of photoreceptors at the bottom like a retina and reducing the number per eye to only a handful we can make an eye which has a higher resolution at comparable cost to our current one.
Lancer
An anti-spearman unit, the lancer uses the same sort of legs as the hunter but only has four of them. The single pair of arms are long with the "hands" modified into a lance with a longer reach then a human spear. This spear is heavily reinforced and the joints on the arms are equipped with biological springs to absorb the impact without snapping. They are the same size as the Soldiers, a fact which reduces their acceleration but gives them far more momentum then the Hunters.
Possibly premature at this point, just throwing it out there.
Author
Topic: Hive Race: The Hive (Read 40112 times)