Sprayer drone
Sprayer drone is based on hunter. Same body. Same acid gland for damage. Same senses. The only and main difference is that Fliers have no limbs at all and those are replaced with a system of wings (exact shape is up to queen's discretion). They have smooth bottom body allowing them to slide along flat surface to take-off or land, alternatively they can be propelled in the air by recently developed bioligical springs in warriors pincers or thrown by workers who climb to elevated space. Their goal is deliver acid even further than spitters can as well as provide scouting
My main concern is that they cannot travel far. Flying takes a lot of energy so if you do it for any length of time... Combine that with the limited availability of launching sites(This could be a detriment to soldiers if they are delayed with launching duties.)... Well, they are likely to have extremely limited loiter time. They may have limited ammunition, it is not exactly clear to me off-hand whether hunters have limited spitting rates but, well, rapid acid production would be another drain on energy. It probably wouldn't detract from flight-time much, a large part of that will be limb wear, but blood-sugar/oxygen-equivalent might take a hit... Or it could just be that they only have one or two attacks in them per flight. I just worry that it might actually be impossible to achieve more than a single short-ranged attack run with minimal effect, and may include many instances of not making it to the lines and having to turn back with no effect and a horrifically inefficient mobility when doing so, as a result of no legs. Fortunately, being insects, they are likely capable of V.T.O.L. so the whole launching thing is likely a non-issue, but they would still need to be carried for efficiency's sake, which could cause atrophy...
It is not terrible, but there are many points of potential extreme failure. Which is not really different from Vespa, except for the launching and carrying things which is a liability to other forces which would need to launch and carry them. Also they lack power and are acid dependant. The longer range will tend to disperse the acid and they are already resistant to it. Again, overdependency on a single thing is bad, just because we have a bonus to acid doesn't mean that we should have acid on all of our forces.
Why I think it is far better then Vespa?
1) It introduces only one new gene: Wings. It focuses effort on this. Even if design itself will be a complete failure we are likely to get a ton of experience in flight. Almost as much as doing: theoretical design:wings
Seems to pretty much tie with Vespa here. I mean, a legless sled carapace seem no different to a pointed ridged head, teaching our forces to throw one another is equivalent to trying to teach a beetle to be better at spatial awareness. The Vespa is very focused on flight. Yes it tries to fix up a few partial projects on the side, but both are new body-forms and benefitting from past efforts seems easier that doing it with no experience at all.
2) It shares parts with hunters meaning improving of the one will cause improvement of the other
...
They are identical in this respect. I don't even...
3) It uses acid gland as a weapon and we have a nice cost reduction for that.
Which conveniently ignores the cost increase from incorporating acid at all. It may well be more efficient than claws in terms of killing power per deployment, but just having a bonus to incorporating acid doesn't mean that acid is actually cheaper. 3-1>1...
Also, we should be dreading overdependance on acid. It is good to incorporate it into our forces, but we have already seen them counter it, and they will likely continue to do so until they can somewhat shield themselves from our N.E.. A single powerful unit is weaker than a range of decent units.
4) It fills the artillery spot
I cannot fathom how this could be true. At best I would think "secondary ranged" with their ranged getting a chance to kill sprayers before sprayers get overhead. Even that seems pushing it and it could easily go down to skirmish or charge, with that at risk of demotion based upon The League's ability to counter airborne opponents. I mean, sure, I could be wrong, they could fly a hundred metres up, out of effective range of anything, merrily loiter over enemy forces long before lines meet, and produce an endless showed of concentrated acid attacks, just like ballista do, but that seems doubtful to me.
5) They should be very resistant to melee damage. After all they stay in the air. Enemy only viable option to deal with those are arrows but even then this creature has some armor
But less armour than drones, which are killed by arrows... Of course they can dodge by constantly moving, which would burn more energy and reduce flight-time and attack accuracy and focus... And yes, very resistant to hand-to-hand, while airborne, which may not be very long, and horrifically very-much-dead to anything and everything when not flying... Everything here is a trade-off.
Are there any interest in this? I can vote for this as a compromise with guys who want flight and who want more drones.
Can we please get a better voting system? If I wanted to play Mafia I would be in a different subforum...
It occupies the role of penetrating lines, focusing force, and dealing with exceptional forces
It fights in melee stage. We have adequate melee fighters. Role of melee fighters is filled. How it engages in melee is irrelevant.
I find your assertion that the method of combat is irrelevant to be completely false. I don't really think that we can agree on this point because I find that statement to be so extremely far from accurate that I couldn't even begin to understand a foundation for it. Unless... Is this about the combat simulator? Filling the range roles is not important. We need to fill roles such as sniper and ocean transport and besieger but range just trades opportunity for brute force. a very effective artillery stage is good for oppressing a weaker force but a strong melee is likely better for pitched battles unless you get a really great conversion ratio for increasing your range. Vespa is inherently inclined to attack high-profile targets. That is a thing that can be modelled by tweaking its casualty selection. It doesn't require a tactic because it is inherent to the gender's own operational inclinations. So is that it?
I think that hunters proved that we can get more than that out of a single design. New legs, New carapace, new weapon... I used to think as you did, but I decided to try SCIENCE!! and turned out that we can do better.
Legs are the only true new thing in hunters. Carapace is a mix of workers and soldiers. Acid gland is a scaled down version of and existing thing. Wings alone are far more complex than changing shape of legs.
If it were just legs then sure, but this seems to be insect legs to mammalian legs. We can observe flying insects just as well as running mammals, more so actually because they are less inclined to flee. And we are already abusing insect scale-economy beyond all reason just to breath so insect wings ought to work when scaled up. Acid gland is a MASSIVELY scaled-down version of an existing thing with a different orientation and fitted into a very different body-plan. Meanwhile the sprayers have a flat bottom, which, I am sure, "seems" like it is extremely simple, but that is forgetting how much stability legs provide. I would be entirely willing to believe that it would be easier to make a working copy the wings on insects than to build a completely new sled-body that doesn't constantly drive its face into the ground. On that note, if you want to improve the design, add a pair of legs to it so that it can at least drag itself, the physics of a rocket-sled really are horrific, and adding uneven surfaces just makes it so very very much worse...
Bows, on the other hand, completely useless, we already have ranged, even if it is just N.E. and building and deploying the things to short-sighted armies is a waste of resources and dice.
*Facepalms* Bows will add to N.E. In no way bows can make spitters worse. Neither they can be useless because they will be add some ranged damage in any case. They may be not useful enough to justify an action, but it is a different story.
I didn't say that, I just said that we already had someone who could shoot over the enemy lines and hit things behind the lines. The main problem that I have with bows is that they are horrifically underpowered on account of our complete lack of experience and the fact that, when choosing archers, short-sightedness is rarely the first item on the check-list. The main problem that I have with the arguments in their favour is that they assume that a bow will have no manpower cost and that we will never want to use wood for biological processes, which results in people claiming that their costs don't exist. I rather suspect that there will, in fact, be manpower/energy costs for production teams, and that there may even be energy costs for carrying them. Thus, in addition to wasting dice that are apparently very important to keep so that we can focus them all into making workers into soldiers, it would also detract from our ongoing operating costs, all so that we can give guns to people who can't shoot straight...
Vespas are less efficient melee fighters than one we have already and they will reduce effectiveness of other melee fighters because we will need to cut production of other melee fighters to make Vespas.
There are diminishing returns to increasing production. Focusing everything into production means losing. They focus on killing high-value targets, so a less-than one-to-one kill ration with them would likely be greater than a greater-than two-to-one kill ratio on a worker. We need a range of forces so that not everything is completely countered at once and a range of threats so that nothing can be completely uncountered. If we just focus everything onto "kill as many of the enemy as possible while building and maintaining the greatest volume of our own forces" with no details beyond that then we will lose when they start to destabilise our forces with specific effects.
What, in total, have our designs thus far done for us in terms of actual performance that actually happened? Because a new unit with a bad die that was barely implemented seems to have been the cream of the crop...
Missed this important part initially. What our designs did? Let me think... digestive improvement added more drones to the frontline, dark vision added skirmish phase causing deaths of hundreds of enemy soldiers. Effect are very visible. If you think that hunters had the biggest impact... then you are ignoring numbers and judge battles by how flashy their description are.
More food that we don't use. Forest queens that have a significant faction opposing them. Skirmish I didn't notice, but considering how outnumbered they are, I can't see that a few hundred slaves are worth what the hunters could do with those resources, and hunters aren't even good. They got a 1 on effectiveness of all things... We have big holes in our army that need filling. We have, thus far, been pretty much exclusively dedicated to logistics and worker improvements and it is not working.
Your creature is limited in range to the melee phase, because it's short range. When entering the melee phase, the wizards have already cast all the spells they're going to cast. Killing them at that point is entirely pointless, and will have no effect on the rest of the battle because the battle is over.
In addition, it's unlikely it'll can do even that. We do not have eyes with great fidelity, we do not have any tactics to identify and destroy high value targets. Odds are that they'll pick random slaves to attack, not mages.
Wizards already have a confusion spell, they can reasonably be assumed to produce more offensive spellcasting. A means of attacking them during an ongoing battle is important. To assume that they will never cast spells into a melee is just folly.
They possess their own means of identifying targets. It may not work, sure, but that is the great mystery of making designs, sometimes things don't work like you expect. Furthermore, there is no specific limit to their range, just their altitude, which is very fitting considering that they are insects, which traditionally have difficulty with altitude... They fly up to a height and fly forwards towards their target before diving into them. They can refine their target somewhat as they close, search for new targets, be revised to seek out siege engines if they miraculously develop long-distance flight... Yes, the design could go bad, I would even say that it is somewhat of a risky design all things considered, but it certainly seems as though its design specifications are plausible and effective.
It can not penetrate lines, as for that it is way too fragile, and too small. As flying unit, it needs to be light, and hence will not be able to penetrate. Conservation of momentum is a thing. A heavy warhorse weights nearly a ton and has a large spear. It needs that to break the line. Your unit has neither the momentum nor the range, meaning it'll take out maybe one spearmen before plowing into the ground, and most likely will simply impale itself onto a spear.
You would be thinking of "breaking formations", not "penetrating lines". It can fly, so penetration is automatic. It can also make small breaches in a strong line. They can kill a couple of guys in a phalanx to let some workers close through the spear-wall and start pulling the formation apart. They can pick off centurions... Cavalry are like strategic bombing, they can turn an army camp into gore-filled craters. Vespa is more like tactical bombing, that one tank that was delaying the advance into a town suddenly explodes. No, they are not going to plough through a force of infantry four-ranks-deep and out the other side without stopping, that doesn't mean that they are incapable of making a small hole in a line that can then be easily opened where otherwise it is just throwing workers into the front of a phalanx.
1) It does not deal with enemy mages
2) It is not capable of avoiding trouble, rather it flies into it, gets it head stuck into someone's gut, then dies horribly.
3) It is not good progress towards getting wings, giving that you give it very bad flight capabilities
4) Why do we want armored heads. Hitting things with your head is stupid.
1: I disagree
2: By the time it is lodged in someone's gut it is too late. Just like killing am age who for some bizarre reason has never bothered to learn a spell that is useful in a melee would be too late. Depending upon the gut it could be very very valuable that it is lodged there, and it is far from impossible that it might go on to do more damage. Especially while they are using slaves to protect their mages...
3: I gave it insect flight characteristics. Low altitude, short distance, good bursts of speed, and insane agility. That is where we start from if we want to have insects. If you want to have the flight performance of hawks or vultures then that is a different story, we will have to start examining such animals and find a way to incorporate endoskeletons and muscles and cartilage and... Or we can take some insect wing with insect flight characteristics and improve them.
4: 1: Because hitting things with your head is a good idea sometimes, such as when you want to go through a tough thing, like a castle wall, or a phalanx, or a siege tower... And insect's body is focused on forward motion, and the head is at the front, if you want finesse, then no, it is terrible, but if you want raw power, then it is the best way.
: 2: It is not just about hitting thing with your head, it is also about things hitting you on the head. Sometimes having a big armoured thing in front of you can be more useful that having a big opening in your armour that you want to stuff food into...
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Topic: Hive Race: The Hive (Read 40574 times)