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Total Members Voted: 14

[Powder Miner]

When the GM practically puts up a neon sign saying "MAKE PORTABLE GATLING GUNS", you follow that advice.

There is no neon sign saying make portable gatling guns. It was one of a laundry list of issues mentioned with our infantry last turn, and by attempting to portray it as simply a matter of PORTABLE GATLING GUNS SIGN you have to ignore the entire litany of problems we face, such as comparative survivability and comparative mobility. Even if this DOES solve the mobile weaponry problem, all it does is make it even, not better than theirs. We cannot narrow enough of these gaps with these revisions to overturn last turn's status quo, much less deal with their new design as well. You cannot oversimplify these facts away.

We can quite possibly lower how much territory we lose this turn, but I am sure that we WILL lose territory this turn. Accordingly, I have voted to button up in hopes of making the losses I see as inevitable this turn hurt less, which will also give us a better base later, especially if we totally hold the South Peaks. Remember, they won pretty handily in the North Peaks.

[NUKE9.13]

When the GM practically puts up a neon sign saying "MAKE PORTABLE GATLING GUNS", you follow that advice.

There is no neon sign saying make portable gatling guns. It was one of a laundry list of issues mentioned with our infantry last turn, and by attempting to portray it as simply a matter of PORTABLE GATLING GUNS SIGN you have to ignore the entire litany of problems we face, such as comparative survivability and comparative mobility. Even if this DOES solve the mobile weaponry problem, all it does is make it even, not better than theirs. We cannot narrow enough of these gaps with these revisions to overturn last turn's status quo, much less deal with their new design as well. You cannot oversimplify these facts away.

Yes, there are other issues that need fixing, and we can't fix them all. I agree that we're probably boned this turn. But just because there are three problems and we can only fix one, doesn't mean we should ignore all the problems and do something else.

Like, even if we assume that czech hedgehogs will be more effective at slowing their advance than portable gatling guns, we have to think ahead as well. I mean, who actually cares if we lose 30% of the Savannah instead of 20%? We'd still be miles away from territory we actually care about. We will need to do portable gatling guns at some point- putting it off in favour of reactionary defensive measures will only widen the gap between our offensive capabilities (whilst PGGs will help defensively as well).

I can sort of see the argument for using the revision to fortify the peaks- you're right that they may well attack their this turn, and level 3 fortifications may not be enough to stop them. I'm leaning towards thinking that they will, but I wouldn't be too upset if we used our second revision to increase our chances.

[Powder Miner]

If we lose more territory in the Savannah, that is a larger period of time that it takes us to go back over the strait and go on the offensive on this entire side of the map, or even just to retake it and start to make it useful again. We don't have fortification anymore there, after all. Furthermore, seeing as this revision wouldn't just go away after this turn, it could let us slow their advances for several turns should we have trouble making up this gap, which would very much add up.

It would also probably apply in other areas besides the Savannah in the future, for that matter.

But now that I think about it even more, considering that the game is intended to at least to some degree be grindy back-and-forth combat, these small differences in each ebb and flow may give us a net advantage.

[Taricus]

Fortify the South Peaks: (2) Powder Miner, DGR
Salviosi Jacks and other defensive measures: (3) Powder, DGR Miner, Taricus
Portable Gatling Guns: (1) NUKE9.13
ECR-15 'Mountaineer': (1) NUKE9.13
TBC-16 "Doomfire" Tactical Bomber: (1) Taricus

[Rockeater]

Fortify the South Peaks: (2) Powder Miner, DGR
Salviosi Jacks and other defensive measures: (4) Powder, DGR Miner, Taricus, Rockeater
Portable Gatling Guns: (1) NUKE9.13
ECR-15 'Mountaineer': (1) NUKE9.13
TBC-16 "Doomfire" Tactical Bomber: (1) Taricus
Fortify Harren (1): Rockeater

[Jilladilla]

When the GM practically puts up a neon sign saying "MAKE PORTABLE GATLING GUNS", you follow that advice.

There is no neon sign saying make portable gatling guns. It was one of a laundry list of issues mentioned with our infantry last turn, and by attempting to portray it as simply a matter of PORTABLE GATLING GUNS SIGN you have to ignore the entire litany of problems we face, such as comparative survivability and comparative mobility. Even if this DOES solve the mobile weaponry problem, all it does is make it even, not better than theirs. We cannot narrow enough of these gaps with these revisions to overturn last turn's status quo, much less deal with their new design as well. You cannot oversimplify these facts away.

We can quite possibly lower how much territory we lose this turn, but I am sure that we WILL lose territory this turn. Accordingly, I have voted to button up in hopes of making the losses I see as inevitable this turn hurt less, which will also give us a better base later, especially if we totally hold the South Peaks. Remember, they won pretty handily in the North Peaks.

At the same time though Powder, simply because it cannot bridge all of the gaps in one fell swoop does not mean that it isn't worthwhile. Arguably being able to leverage greater firepower in a more mobile manner would mitigate their defensive advantage as well. As for your concern for only matching them? Well we are at a current disadvantage; outright upending the status quo in multiple areas to an advantage is a tall order. The path of 1000 miles begins with but a single step, after all.

Now as for the other revision... I am torn, really. The Mountaineer could have pretty decent synergy with the portable gatling guns, and possibly serve as a foundation for a take 2 on the uniform; but reinforcing the South Peaks could also be a decent move, with all evidence pointing that they can in fact beat us up in mountains and successfully force a landing... My vote there is very tentative; not solid at all. But in the end?

Fortify the South Peaks: (3) Powder Miner, DGR, Jilladilla
Salviosi Jacks and other defensive measures: (4) Powder Miner, DGR, Taricus, Rockeater
Portable Gatling Guns: (2) NUKE9.13, Jilladilla
ECR-15 'Mountaineer': (1) NUKE9.13
TBC-16 "Doomfire" Tactical Bomber: (1) Taricus
Fortify Harren (1): Rockeater

PRE-POST EDIT (Dammit why do you all have to organize your thoughts faster than me?): Powder, I don't think we've lost our fortification in the Savannah; it's still listed at 2 Entrenchment, we just can't further entrench ourselves in it while Abbera is there.


As for the Jacks.... This is just something that is going to go obsolete, you know? It may have a day or two at the edge of the spotlight; but all they need to do is make their stuff hover higher, or even just 'jump' to render it pointless. It's a dead-end tech, and it's not even one I consider vital to compete in the moment.. Hell; the jacks may even end up more of a hindrance than help! All of our ground vehicles remain pretty darn close to the ground, we don't really have hover vehicles like they do. (I mean, yes the armored sleds hover, but those are pushed around by hand soooo..)

[Powder Miner]

But if they make their stuff hover higher, we can just attach Caelium to the jacks and make them hover too, if we even want to bother at that point. Their tanks don't hover, just being tanks, and that's their meatiest vehicle fucked with. If they want to make their hovercraft hover higher or jump, they have to blow a revision, and at that point because their underside is vulnerable they have a problem with just getting fucking shot.

Forcing them to invest to counter the revision and then putting themselves into a different kind of poor position in the process is something I would also consider a victory.

I think that dealing with their gap is better done through a design. I want to lessen the outcome of this turn and the next, at least, which is something that these jacks will do, give us some breathing room to put some real investment into countering their advantages.

[Jilladilla]

Err... Powder? If we make the jacks hover they can just be trivially pushed aside by even un-augmented infantry...

And there is no guarantee that their counterplay would result in only 'hover higher' or whatever. They could very well take the opportunity to improve their transports further. (And if the jacks do work; wouldn't you think the underside issues would have been revealed to them?)
Heck, they could make a sticky caelium grenade/satchel/whatever that has a built in miniature spark-pack in it; and just use that to make the jacks or whatever else they stick it to just float away. (if they're close enough to the jacks to render it an obstacle, they're close enough to stick that on it)
Or heck, just ignore it, take the temporary hit and design future stuff in a way to render it 100% pointless and in the end make us the ones to have wasted a revision on dead-end technology. This game isn't anywhere near over after all; short term boosts that won't provide any foundational benefits aren't the answer.

As to their tanks... I don't think we ever truly had major issues with their tanks?


And we all know that the portable gatlings would also 'lessen the outcome of this turn'; Powder, and while yes I understand your desire for a design for gap bridging, would it not be potentially better served on bridging the other portions of the gap (like the BSU Exoskeleton tried)? We'd need the portable firepower anyway in order to fully bridge the gap; we really don't have any of that outside the LAMB.

[Powder Miner]

Err... Powder? If we make the jacks hover they can just be trivially pushed aside by even un-augmented infantry...

I-I blame the time

But as for all of the examples you're talking about, that involves spending designs. It isn't even revisions at that point, which is why I'm not too worried about them upstaging the jacks with a technological jump. That's a lot of investment -- and if what you're worried about is them using a design in order to counter the jacks and advance further, it's better than them using a design in order to respond to our efforts to counter the infantry gap. I keep mentioning breathing room for a reason -- we need to do a significant amount of infantry work to take the lead again, and if the jacks really do take that much effort from them, that's effort NOT being spent on countering our larger plans.

[Jilladilla]

The Caelum sticky satchel really only needs a smaller power source from them, you know (and glue, I guess); that may not be too far out of reach of a revision to pull off. They've pulled off a fairly comprehensive upgrade on their Kingmaker transport at least once (look at the Caliburn); and the level of change between the two doesn't imply re-design.

And this may be harsh of me but breathing room just isn't required right now; we're neither in position to start a game-winning lunge nor are we at risk of being pushed to the brink of defeat.

And like you said; 'we need to do a significant amount of infantry work to take the lead again'; and the jacks don't qualify as infantry work...

[Powder Miner]

Yeah, but you don't have to worry about Abberas responding to it with infantry work, either, like you would with the PGG, especially since it would pretty much be our only actual produced piece of work in the turn, at this rate. I also want to reiterate the points I made in the Discord that I think responding all at once is more likely to actually be done than stretching it out into multiple turns, it would be a surprise, and it would create a larger difference in the flow of battle than would a series of increments.

[Twinwolf]

Alright, going to weigh in with my 2 cents.

I'm not against some kind of defensive revision. I really, really don't think the jacks are that revision at all though, trivial as they are. Maybe folded in with some other defensive things, but I'm not sure a mine is enough to make it worth that, and they definitely should not be the primary focus as they are now. Maybe add in an AT mine with some kind of gravity-trigger in addition to the normal one, for dealing with their infantry transports along with tanks? Or do continue to try and do the uniform stuff - I don't see the Mountaineer being that difficult, although that's not uniform. I do think that the portable machine guns would help in defense as well as offense, and to be entirely honest Powder I don't see where the argument of not stretching improvement across turns comes from. Salvios has shown with the Mountain that we can work up to things across multiple turns, and I really don't think that everything happening in one turn would somehow cause more of a shift than the same stuff happening across multiple. I'm also not sure how Abbera would "respond" to mobile machine guns or high mobility infantry with "infantry work" any more than they would increase anti-infantry ability regardless.

So, in regards to Abberan strategy, I see them blowing up the bridge as a clear indicator of two things: They expect us to attack via Harren, and they're not planning to go on the attack there for a bit. They probably mean to either double push the Savannah to get a proper foothold, or push mountains and the savannah trying to circumvent Harren altogether. I don't feel like losing territory this turn is a foregone conclusion though, depending on how Abbera's normal design worked; what let them succeed in defending the mountains, will not necessarily let them succeed on the assault side of that. That being said, it well could, and with how narrowly they took ground in the Savannah with fortification 2 I would be surprised if they could breach fortification 4 mountains - that issue is mostly one of whether we think that keeping that territory on lockdown is worth spending a revision. It's basically, do we want to use that revision on some issue that we have, or do we want to use it to make it so we basically don't have to worry about our mountains again?

So, my vote is going to be largely based on what I think Abbera's going to be doing with this turn. I think they're going to push the side lanes - they've basically tried to lock down their crossing, that's where their fortification is going to go, and the bridge blowing up is not what one does on the attack. I think their normal design will be something making an attempt to match the Charybdis - right now, that is the massive thing they can't deal with, and even with the ships they have no real answer to it once they're off the coasts. I think that their national effort is some kind of sky battleship for the same reason - and I think it didn't work all that much, since MoP implied we'd get a second revision if one side's NE sucked. Thus one of their revisions is almost certainly to that, and the other is likely going to be fixing up their normal design if it worked, or trying something else in the AA vein - anti-air gun? Although, I could also see some modification to the tank...

I am leaning towards a vote for the mountain fortification, since I think if any of what they did this turn went well, they might have enough to get past level 2 fortification, but I'm confident they won't pass level 4. I think we could try and push the crossing this turn, depending on MoP's answer in discord about whether we can get the bridges up this turn. I expect that that'll be a no, though, so maybe defending there is the smart play. Thus, I think only pushing the Savannah, trying to get them out of there before they get in deep is what we should do. Now, what would help with that? Of what's been proposed, the mobile machine guns, the bombers, and the mountaineer work best on that. I think while they're scrambling to reach parity in the air, we can gain ground on the ground stuff, so I'm leaning towards either the mobile MGs or the Mountaineer. Of those, I honestly could go for either, but I'm slightly leaning the machine gun on the grounds that it could help in defense as well as offense. Not a solid decision and I might change my mind - the Mountaineer's experience towards a retry of the infantry uniform would be super valuable, and honestly I quite like the bomber too.

Fortify the South Peaks: (4) Powder Miner, DGR, Jilladilla, Twinwolf
Salviosi Jacks and other defensive measures: (4) Powder Miner, DGR, Taricus, Rockeater
Portable Gatling Guns: (3) NUKE9.13, Jilladilla, Twinwolf
ECR-15 'Mountaineer': (1) NUKE9.13
TBC-16 "Doomfire" Tactical Bomber: (1) Taricus
Fortify Harren (1): Rockeater

[Madman198237]

Deploying the Mountaineer would grant our infantry extra mobility (very useful on open terrain where pieces of cover are few and far between) and allow them to carry an MG such as the PGG proposal. Combined, these things remove two of their three infantry advantages. We will have surpassed them in firepower with the LGG/GGG, and will be at least as mobile if not more mobile with the Mountaineer depending on how well it works. I expect it should work well, as we now have lots of experience with Myomer powering and mobility.

I believe the bomber will be inaccurate and insufficient and that fortifying the mountain range is unnecessary while we have air superiority. The Salviosi Jacks proposal is... not great. It's a revision to make something we should probably be deploying at higher levels of fortification anyway, and it masquerades as an effective way to deny terrain when it's really not. You need to deploy too many such obstacles in too little time and in terrain such as the Savannah it's not even useful a little bit due to the wide-open nature of the place.

It also doesn't matter if the enemy responds to our infantry advancement, we have the means to be better than them, all we need to do is exploit that. They can play catch-up all day long and it won't matter if we make appropriate use of Myomers, Caelium Steel, Impact systems, etc.

Fortify the South Peaks: (4) Powder Miner, DGR, Jilladilla, Twinwolf
Salviosi Jacks and other defensive measures: (4) Powder Miner, DGR, Taricus, Rockeater
Portable Gatling Guns: (4) NUKE9.13, Jilladilla, Twinwolf, Madman
ECR-15 'Mountaineer': (3) NUKE9.13, Madman
TBC-16 "Doomfire" Tactical Bomber: (1) Taricus
Fortify Harren (1): Rockeater

[Powder Miner]

Fortify the South Peaks: (3) DGR, Jilladilla, Twinwolf
Salviosi Jacks and other defensive measures: (4) Powder Miner, DGR, Taricus, Rockeater
Portable Gatling Guns: (5) NUKE9.13, Jilladilla, Twinwolf, Madman, Powder Miner
ECR-15 'Mountaineer': (3) NUKE9.13, Madman
TBC-16 "Doomfire" Tactical Bomber: (1) Taricus
Fortify Harren (1): Rockeater

While this is admittedly as much of a tactical vote as a genuine one, good points were made about starting off with the PGG and riskiness with dice, so PGG and Jacks isn’t a terrible combo either. It means, I suspect, that we’ll have two fronts to contend with now but it does mean we’ll be able to contend with them better next turn.

[Madman198237]

But the jacks are just so...lackluster. They provide only a defensive advantage and are only useful against vehicles. Carried GGGs are effective against everything and useful on both the offense and defense, and Mountaineer allows for us to deploy more of them in more situations than Avalanche can manage. And also sets us up to do another uniform redesign next turn or whenever we can.