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[flazeo25]

Reinforcement rates:
1st front 20%, 2nd front 40%, 3rd 40% (3) strongpoint, NUKE9.13, Puppyguard, flazeo25

Spitter redistribution:
5 to 1st front 10 to 2nd front, 25 3rd front (1) strongpoint
Stay at 3rd front: (2) NUKE9.13, Puppyguard, flazeo25

Budget changes:
Ravancher 0 to 5%(+5%), Spitter 5 to 10%(+5%), soldiers 15% to 10%(-5%) workers 68% to 63%(-5%) Hunters 12% (same) (3) strongpoint, NUKE9.13, Puppyguard, flazeo25

Nat effort:
3rd front (3) strongpoint, NUKE9.13, Puppyguard, flazeo25

Going down symbiont route seems good, as for wood towers seems like useful use for it. As for workers lots of ways to affect them which seems good and ravanchers would need maybe 3-4 revisions before they ever be able to replace soldier as frontline unit.

[10ebbor10]

Anyway, a slight comparison.

Current forces Front 3 :

Hive 3rd Front [National!]
  98 soldiers
  292 workers
  19 hunters
  40 spitters

Reinforcements : 1120 Manpower
 - 5 Revanchers : 125 / 140 manpower
 - 9 spitters :   94.5/99.5 Manpower
 - 16 Soldiers :    96 /99.5 Manpower
 - 68 Hunters :     119 / 119.4
 - Workers: 623 Workers

So, we'll enter the battle with :

5 more Revanchers
1 Less Spitter
3 More soldiers
52 more Hunters
18 more workers

compared to last time.


Let's hope those Revanchers are great at taking out fortifications, because we'll need them.

[RAM]

Problem with keeping that huge force of spitters on 3rd front is that it may hurt our chances to capture larger city on front 2 later....

1) Revise soldiers to better models > I don't think that this is practical
2) Improve workers to the point when they will be better than soldiers both in TC and combat ability > We invested a lot of actions in workers and it is logical to keep improving them further. Giving them weapons, reducing their cost, improving their carapaces are all viable options.
3) Improve ravanchers to the point when they'll stop being nat-effort and become frontline melee unit. > It is a long road but it may be an option
4) Design new melee unit > Totally acceptable course of action if we can be sure that new one will be significantly better than soldiers.

I still think that we have to find uses for timber.

I think that leaving the spitters is a very good idea. The spitters will naturally redistribute over time due to reinforcements and losses. Leaving the spitters on front 3 allows us to put more force on front 3 now while we are focusing there and naturally redistribute our forces to other fronts without spending a die on it. If we have a choice between 20/40/40% and redistribute spitters, or 25/40/(35%+legacy spitters) and both result in an equal distribution of force, then we should take the more balanced reinforcements and let legacy units make up the difference. Having one of our fronts perpetually at half-strength is just begging for a blitzkrieg. Actually, given that fortifications provide a fixed amount of T.C., it would actually be really sensible for them to do a 98/1/1 split to force us to focus on one front while we can only spare a handful of workers to futilely claw at 10-metre tall smooth stone walls while a few conscripted peasants stand on top hurling crude language at our stymied force...

1+2) Maybe hunters will suffice, but we really don't want to just throw away good units. There is way too much risk involved in overspecialisation and too much advantage from combined arms. I recall a convincing analysis from someone that a large number of resilient units would draw fire from a few highly lethal units. I think that it is very important that we have energy-efficient workers for civilian duties, turning our workers into unstoppable killing machines might leave our economy barren. That said, we can make different strains of workers, and they would be a decent base for sturdy infantry that soaks damage. Then again, so would soldiers. Making small soldiers, or incorporating soldier elements into worker designs might be a good plan? There is something to be said for having something really big and armoured, for the advantage of thick armour that doesn't show appreciable damage from single hits... but given how little focus big units get... until they design assassins for focusing down our few expensive damage-dealers...
 Long story short, throwing away designs i not all good. It is easy to look at the fewer actions required to develop them and see it as all good, but it is fewer actions to counter them too...

3) I am strongly against this. Revanchers are siege. Siege is a wonderful place for national effort, I would say that being able to easily shift them around to fortifications is greater an advantage than being limited to one front and restricted to 5% is a disadvantage. Again, maybe we could split the streams, but we may as well just build something new.

4) I would probably hold off on this. Lets us work on some new biologies on our various existing units and then build a new unit when we have a nice accumulation of resources to draw upon in their design. But we should definitely be aiming for revolutionary shifts rather than progressive shifts. We need good new parts to produce a truly impressive new critter.

Using timber is good. I still want to try metabolising it though. I still like my idea of converting it into a rigid glue that can be used to rapidly fortify tunnels...

[Devastator]

Continuing to lose specialization in order to avoid 'wasting actions' on stronger workers is a mistake, because it makes our workers worse at their jobs.  I don't think this is the usual arms race where the solution to victory is to just keep improving the same unit forever.  A worker will spend 99% of its time not fighting, where a soldier will be spending much more time fighting, so improving the soldiers will be more effective than continuing to chase tiny gains on improving workers.

I'm not saying the improvements to it are bad, but that there's nothing wrong with making our fighting units better at fighting.  It's probably a better idea than continuing to try and push our workers into becoming fighters.  Especially with the existance of high-speed low efficiency muscles and low-speed high efficiency muscles.

Improving soldiers should be very practical.  We have lots of relevant improvements that haven't been applied to them, and will make them much more effective.  In the case of workers we'll have to make new technologies, and then apply them to the workers, which will take more actions, be slower, and have twice as many chances to botch it.


Really, I'm not against replacing soldiers en-masse too, if there's too many revisions to make to fix them.  Do a new unit, and use a revision or two to pump the new unit.

Just no need to make the workers bad fighters.  We can make fighters that expect to live a couple weeks and do no work, so a good fighter doesn't need a lot of stuff that our workers do.  Minimal digestive systems, high-performance muscles, specialized fighting limbs, etc.

[Strongpoint]

Continuing to lose specialization in order to avoid 'wasting actions' on stronger workers is a mistake, because it makes our workers worse at their jobs.  I don't think this is the usual arms race where the solution to victory is to just keep improving the same unit forever.  A worker will spend 99% of its time not fighting

Workers on the battlefield are not part of our economy. "Working" workers are in the background just like emitics are. We aren't even sure that have doesn't use version 1.0 workers for day to day operations.

but that there's nothing wrong with making our fighting units better at fighting

Worker caste are no less fighting unit than anything else

We have lots of relevant improvements that haven't been applied to them, and will make them much more effective.

Like? Night vision? They have no need for it. Barbs? They have no need for it. New armor? It offers less protection than the current one.

In the case of workers we'll have to make new technologies, and then apply them to the workers, which will take more actions, be slower, and have twice as many chances to botch it.

We have new carapaces to revise in. This is a relevant tech that will improve workers further.

[Devastator]

Continuing to lose specialization in order to avoid 'wasting actions' on stronger workers is a mistake, because it makes our workers worse at their jobs.  I don't think this is the usual arms race where the solution to victory is to just keep improving the same unit forever.  A worker will spend 99% of its time not fighting

Workers on the battlefield are not part of our economy. "Working" workers are in the background just like emitics are. We aren't even sure that have doesn't use version 1.0 workers for day to day operations.

If they didn't go on the battlefield, we wouldn't have to breed new ones to make up the casulties.  So yes, workers on the battlefield are part of our economy, as it's a drain when they die.  If they didn't have to fight on the battlefield, that would save an awful lot of manpower replacing them with more effective soldiers.  And yeah, we only have the one kind of worker, our current one.

but that there's nothing wrong with making our fighting units better at fighting

Worker caste are no less fighting unit than anything else

Well, except for the fact that they die easier and need a lot of stuff a soldier doesn't in order to do their actual jobs.  They also eat more and are available in smaller numbers each time we make our workers better fighters.  Upgrading workers worsens our economy.

We have lots of relevant improvements that haven't been applied to them, and will make them much more effective.

Like? Night vision? They have no need for it. Barbs? They have no need for it. New armor? It offers less protection than the current one.

Soldiers could absolutely use night vision, it would help them a lot.

In the case of workers we'll have to make new technologies, and then apply them to the workers, which will take more actions, be slower, and have twice as many chances to botch it.

We have new carapaces to revise in. This is a relevant tech that will improve workers further.

Carapaces that take longer to grow and take more energy.  That's not an improvement on our workers, it makes them no better at working and only serves to keep them alive longer when they fight.  The best way to keep a worker alive is for it to not have to fight in the first place.

It's not improving workers to make them cost more and spend more energy working.  It's disimproving them, because we need them to bulk up our armies.  Much better to improve the creatures specialized in fighting if we want to bulk up our armies.  Improve workers to improve the economy, improve the fighters to improve our ability in combat.

In the end it just seems like improving the ability of our workers to fight is a dead end, that we resorted to because we needed a push to start the game.  There's a million more things we can do with dedicated fighting units that simply won't be possible if our fighters are some overcomplicated hybrid chassis that needs to do everything, instead of just fighting.  Piling more resources into pursuing an eventual dead end seems like a waste of time, IMO, when we can use that same time to make us some great dedicated fighting units, and make those units for fighting only.

[RAM]

I suspect that soldiers, queens, and spitters could all benefit from the revisions to revenchers to make their size less punishing. And I expect that soldiers would gain from spiky legs. Hunter carapace might be able to work over joints to add protection or replace joints for more mobility.

Economy really is a bit of a black box, but making workers more efficient at working(less effective at fighting) can probably get us economy bonii.

[Devastator]

There's two things that stand out to me most about using workers as fighting.  Protection improvements seem particularly wasted becuse the only purpose of those is to keep them alive longer.. they'll live much longer if they don't have to fight in the first place.

The second thing is all the stuff that can be used on dedicated combat units that simply would waste too much time and energy on a non-combat unit.  There's been a lot of research on parasites and symbiotic organisms, for instance.  We could make some kind of remora that lives for the sole purpose of removing lactic acid buildup from anerobic muscle exertions, (and then die from poisioning itself), massively increasing the short-term speed and strength of our fighters, but it would be horribly wasteful to include such on our workers.

And there's plenty of more possibilities like that.

[Strongpoint]

If they didn't have to fight on the battlefield, that would save an awful lot of manpower replacing them with more effective soldiers.  And yeah, we only have the one kind of worker, our current one.

If we replace all our frontline workers with "more effective soldiers" we'll get squashed on the frontlines but our economy will stay exactly the same. Also, why don't we allocate budget on emitics?

Soldiers could absolutely use night vision, it would help them a lot.

*Tries to imagine a horse sized drone that tries to ambush enemy forces during the night*
Also, such upgrade is not metabolically free.

Carapaces that take longer to grow and take more energy.  That's not an improvement on our workers, it makes them no better at working

It is irrelevant if anything makes worker better at working when we are talking about battlefield performance.

It's not improving workers to make them cost more and spend more energy working. It's disimproving them...

There are no such thing in the game mechanic. Neither it makes any sense outside of game mechanic. If workers upgraded for war are worse than older model in civilian roles, then queen can and will produce older model to fill civilian roles. Workers on frontlines do not participate in resource gathering and other stuff like that. They are no less purely military units than soldiers or spitters or whatever.

If we'll upgrade worker caste that is better at working but worse at fighting I expect some kind of economic bonus.

[Devastator]

If they didn't have to fight on the battlefield, that would save an awful lot of manpower replacing them with more effective soldiers.  And yeah, we only have the one kind of worker, our current one.

If we replace all our frontline workers with "more effective soldiers" we'll get squashed on the frontlines but our economy will stay exactly the same. Also, why don't we allocate budget on emitics?

We'd be able to spend a lot less on replacing workers, as they wouldn't be dying.  Every worker that doesn't die is more resources that can be spent on other units.  So it would make the economy better, by not making our workers fight, freeing up a lot of manpower.

Soldiers could absolutely use night vision, it would help them a lot.

*Tries to imagine a horse sized drone that tries to ambush enemy forces during the night*
Also, such upgrade is not metabolically free.

Why not?  If it's not moving it doesn't make a lot of noise.  People have been ambushed by cavalry charges many times in real warfare, and that was during the day.  Cavalry charges at night would be amazing at smashing enemy armies.  They weren't done because you couldn't see anything and your horse would trip over something and die, but that's not an issue for us.

It's not improving workers to make them cost more and spend more energy working. It's disimproving them...

There are no such thing in the game mechanic. Neither it makes any sense outside of game mechanic. If workers upgraded for war are worse than older model in civilian roles, then queen can and will produce older model to fill civilian roles. Workers on frontlines do not participate in resource gathering and other stuff like that. They are no less purely military units than soldiers or spitters or whatever.

Why does it make sense for our fighting units to be working units?  That's what doesn't make sense, not trying to make our fighting units better at fighting, and our working units better at working.

The only reason it was done is because we had to, not because it was a good idea.

Lastly, the queen seems to only make one type of each unit.  We have to specifically direct changes to the ratio of units we create, as well as changes to our disposition of manpower.  This costs us dice.  As we don't get these changes for free, I'm sure we don't get the better workers (worse fighters) for free.

[Strongpoint]

We'd be able to spend a lot less on replacing workers, as they wouldn't be dying.  Every worker that doesn't die is more resources that can be spent on other units.  So it would make the economy better, by not making our workers fight, freeing up a lot of manpower.

Then why we don't spend a die to make our budget like 0% workers, 70% soldiers?

Why does it make sense for our fighting units to be working units?  That's what doesn't make sense, not trying to make our fighting units better at fighting, and our working units better at working.

Exactly. It doesn't make sense. Our Workers fight. They are no less fighting units than soldiers. You are trying to say that are special case. They aren't.

Edit reacting to edit

Lastly, the queen seems to only make one type of each unit.  We have to specifically direct changes to the ratio of units we create, as well as changes to our disposition of manpower.  This costs us dice.  As we don't get these changes for free, I'm sure we don't get the better workers (worse fighters) for free.

We changed workers several times during this game. It had zero impact on economy every time. Also, you keep ignoring that Emitics are produced outside of budget and they are exactly a version of workers.

[Iituem]

Workers are workers; unless you dedicate a design to creating a specific non-combat drone who stays off the battlefield (such as the Emitics) workers do double-duty for all the Hive's needs - some of those are off-battlefield, some are on.  As you saw when creating the Emitics as a result of the Ruminant Digestive System, those are true non-combatants and will never show up on the field.  An unspecified number exist off-field, visible in their effects on the economy - Emitics provide a 10% increase to food and allow very minor food production in forested regions.  They have no combat ability, and will be wiped out whenever a hive is wiped out, since they are incapable of defending themselves.

Right now, you don't have specialised off-field construction, farming or any of the like drones - worker drones do the lot, and they do it pretty damn efficiently while multi-tooling as combatants.  Just be aware that food dedicated to off-field drones may result in bonuses to areas of efficiency, but they do still have to eat.  Some of them (like Emitics) just produce more food than they consume.

[Devastator]

We'd be able to spend a lot less on replacing workers, as they wouldn't be dying.  Every worker that doesn't die is more resources that can be spent on other units.  So it would make the economy better, by not making our workers fight, freeing up a lot of manpower.

Then why we don't spend a die to make our budget like 0% workers, 70% soldiers?

That's exactly what I'd like to be able to do.

Why does it make sense for our fighting units to be working units?  That's what doesn't make sense, not trying to make our fighting units better at fighting, and our working units better at working.

Exactly. It doesn't make sense. Our Workers fight. They are no less fighting units than soldiers. You are trying to say that are special case. They aren't.

Yes they are lesser fighting units than they can be, because they have to be able to work and have different requirements for what they do.  Fighting units can be better fighters, and working units can be better workers.  They should each be special cases, like our other castes.

[Strongpoint]

Iituem
Hm, question to stop walls of text. Lets say we do a revision that will reduce worker's effectiveness as worker. Lets say... replace their four finger graspers with a chitin balls for bashing. Will we get a penalty to economy?

[Devastator]

Iltuem
How many workers will we need to spend manpower to replace if they're only doing farming and not doing any fighting at all?