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[10ebbor10]

On a side note, we may want to revise our Spitters to no longer be nat effort. Those things could help enormously on other fronts.

[Iituem]

If you designed Breakers, the shielded head would probably be part of the gene bank, assuming it worked.  Also, explicit formation tactics are a Design or Revision (if it's obvious and simple with an existing design) to implement.  Troops on both sides are assumed to employ tactics on the ground as they see fit, but neither (currently) has hard and fast tactical doctrines in place.

Also, I tweak the system as I go if I think something needs it.

Mostly right now I'm waiting on the League to decide on a design, but that might happen tomorrow because it's late.

[Iituem]

Design: Infra-Red Perception   [Effectiveness: 1] [Expense: 3] [Bugs: 4]

Despite being more in line with our present expertise, the Queen has not had the most success adapting the light-sensing pigments within the standard Worker compound eye, at least not without significant metabolic expenditure.  Tweaking perception of cells to receive infra-red light has currently meant giving up perception of other elements of the visual light spectrum; our drones have lost the ability to perceive certain types of blue and violet, which itself has reduced immediate threat perception.  The trade off is that our drones now have very limited heat sight; resolution is appalling due to the inefficiency of the IR cells and their limited distribution across the eye, but it is enough to detect bodies of troops moving at night, or their campfires.  Ambushes with workers may be of limited effectiveness, but they are now at least possible.

Beyond the trade-off effect, the new eyes do occasionally create 'artefacts' when strong colours and strong IR signals overlap.  This is a fairly minor bug, but will be endemic throughout the worker population.  Additionally, the new cells are rather metabolically demanding; we can expect drones to require more food than they used to in order to sustain these changes.

The manpower cost of workers has risen to 1.1 manpower.  They are very slightly worse at melee combat, but more capable in the skirmish phase.


It is now the Revision Phase.  You have 3 dice remaining.

[10ebbor10]

We really don't have any luck, do we.

Can we choose not to deploy this change? Because losing 10% of our Worker reinforcements isn't great. Those workers and their TC could be what tips the scale between capturing stuff and not capturing it, or holding stuff and not holding it.

You know what. I'm going to steal an idea from spiders.

Infra-red Revision : The infrared eyes are interesting, but not yet useful. In order to avoid interfering with the current eyes, the infrared cells are moved to separate secondary eyes, where they're not displacing normal eye function. The secondary eyes lack the size to resolve anything beyond movement or bodies moving at night, but the crude IR couldn't much more than that anyway.

Oh, and because we need to up our numbers.

Larval Mitosis : The Queen is capable of producing only a limited amount of eggs in each cycle, whether these are large or small. The largal mitosis technology proposes to increase reproduction rates for smaller insects, by having each egg split into multiple creatures early in it's development phase.

[NUKE9.13]

Welp.

Infra-Red Cell Clusters: The interference of IR cells with other cells in the eye is unacceptable. We shall instead move all the IR cells into a separate section of the eye whilst increasing their numbers (as we no longer have to worry about them interfering with other cells). This should both restore normal function to the rest of the eye, whilst the higher density of IR cells in the IR clusters should yield a better resolution.
It may be possible to spin off the IR clusters into entirely separate eyes, which would be a superior outcome.

The cost increase might be something we just have to live with. If we can fix their melee ability/increase their skirmish ability, they should be able to deal more than 10% extra casualties, making up for the loss in numbers. Which is what this revision aims to do, improve both combat roles by dividing the eye into an unaltered normal section (restore melee to previous value), and a specialised IR section (improve skirmish power).

Revision 1:
Infra-Red Cell Clusters: (1) NUKE9.13

[Iituem]

Yeah, if you vote for a (no cost) Don't deploy Design in the Strategy phase, I won't apply it to the template.

[RAM]

Would partial distribution be possible? Like, if we were to have, say, "scout workers" with I.R. that represent only 1% of our workers, while the rest are unaltered? Oh, and if we want to do two designs, do we need to do them both at once? I was kind of considering doing the Battering beetle if I.R. seemed conducive.

[10ebbor10]

I'd rather like doing 2 revisions then changing distribution in tactics.

[Iituem]

You used up a design on the IR eyes, so you can certainly create a sub-class of IR workers.  They will have the stats of the IR workers, although you could use a Revision to try and create a defined new drone class, so long as there aren't significant changes beyond how much IR vision you implement.

But yeah, it's no cost to have a percentage of your workers take the IR 'upgrade'.

Technically, you could do another Design now, you do have the dice, it will just use up any Revisions/Strategy actions (that cost dice) for this turn.  It's neater to do multiple Designs at once, but I'm fine with you doing another one if people want it.

[NUKE9.13]

We need to reassign troops to the first front. So we need to keep a die back for that.
We could do two revisions, if someone can think of a second one that's worth it.

[Shadowclaw777]

Revision 1:
Infra-Red Cell Clusters: (2) NUKE9.13, Shadowclaw
Revision 2:
Larval Mitosis: (1] Shadowclaw

Someone already brought up another revision, to increase our reinforcement and number size of the army.

[Puppyguard]

Revision 1:
Infra-Red Cell Clusters: (3) NUKE9.13, Shadowclaw, Puppyguard
Revision 2:
Larval Mitosis: (2) Shadowclaw, Puppyguard

[NUKE9.13]

Someone already brought up another revision, to increase our reinforcement and number size of the army.

Indeed ebbor did. By sneakily editing it into their post, so I never noticed it.
...no, actually, the edit happened before I posted. But it did happen whilst I was typing.

Anyway, an entirely new eye seems ambitious for a revision. But it's pretty similar to what I suggested.
Larval Mitosis has two problems. One, it's a design. Two, our reinforcement is limited by our food production, not birth rates.

[RAM]

Does someone want to put up a revision to our first design?

It's neater to do multiple Designs at once

The problem is that it is more pragmatic to see how a design works prior to deciding to do another one. Being neat will tend to lose out to granting an in-game advantage. Imma take a moment to vote for neatness over pragmatism, but it'll be a tough sell.

[FallacyofUrist]

Revision 1:
Infra-Red Cell Clusters: (4) NUKE9.13, Shadowclaw, Puppyguard, FallacyofUrist
Revision 2:
Larval Mitosis: (3) Shadowclaw, Puppyguard, FallacyofUrist