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[IronyOwl]

Judging from what Dev has said (quotes at bottom of post), I probably won't do any better than doubling the capacity of transports.  That is, making them capable of lifting one huge unit, two larges, four mediums, etc.  Even that might be reaching a bit--I think I'll work on improving their capacity by 50% next, and then extrapolating whether or not researching larger transports is worth it based on how long it takes.  I don't have any information on how inefficient high-speed ships are, but if you're building huge-size infrastructure anyway, I bet ships are better transports long term.

I can't guarantee any time frame, I'd be starting research on better transports this turn.  Currently I can only produce basic transports.  I haven't run the numbers on how much money I need yet, but yes, earlier money would be more useful; the most likely expense is "more workshops", as those are useful immediately upon completion, due to the massive imbalance between combat jet power and production cost.

I have received confirmation that everyone can assume they're on or have access to the coast unless they super-specify otherwise, so I'll try to go for this at some point. However, even if I started working on a lab now, it'd take me several turns to get it up, then more time to research it, then more time to build the damned things. In addition, a High Energy Physics Lab would assist with the design (I don't have one and would prefer never to get one) and ideally I'd want Huge transports which would require researching a Huge lab prior to building it for even more delays.

I'll probably be expanding rapidly this turn to field more tanks, which means I'll probably need to buy more transports before yours are ready. If you want to hold off on better air transport hoping I eventually get good water transport that's an option. Personally though, I'm a little nervous about wagering on kaiju never falling from the sky or burrowing up from the ground or anything.

Still willing to loan or put in a down payment of a few hundred credits in the meantime.

Guts, Muscle, Skin.  At this point, I don't know precisely what I want--I'm totally willing to just give some to you in exchange for credit.  All of my research capacity is currently wrapped up in things that I intend to mass produce, so I have no use for kaiju bits.  Most immediately, I suppose I'd like to be given a K-bit enhanced unit, so that my proving grounds building can tell me if there's anything special about them.

Credit(s) are good, I don't believe I'll have a K-bit unit until pw gives me his magic wasps. I am also funding ER's boondoggle, though, so hopefully we'll find out what happens when you do... that.

Would 30/piece be too stingy? I'm willing to pay 50, I just probably shouldn't.

Even then... the catgirls are kinda a massively expensive boondoggle

That's a siggin'.

Look on the bright side: This is obviously an extreme outlier nobody would do anything similar to under normal circumstances, so it'll help give us an extreme data point for comparison along multiple axes.

[Naturegirl1999]

Guts, Muscle, Skin.  At this point, I don't know precisely what I want--I'm totally willing to just give some to you in exchange for credit.  All of my research capacity is currently wrapped up in things that I intend to mass produce, so I have no use for kaiju bits.  Most immediately, I suppose I'd like to be given a K-bit enhanced unit, so that my proving grounds building can tell me if there's anything special about them.

Credit(s) are good, I don't believe I'll have a K-bit unit until pw gives me his magic wasps. I am also funding ER's boondoggle, though, so hopefully we'll find out what happens when you do... that.

I have a wasp too. She’s eager to explore and will help in the next Kaiju fight

[Stirk]

Guts, Muscle, Skin.  At this point, I don't know precisely what I want--I'm totally willing to just give some to you in exchange for credit.  All of my research capacity is currently wrapped up in things that I intend to mass produce, so I have no use for kaiju bits.  Most immediately, I suppose I'd like to be given a K-bit enhanced unit, so that my proving grounds building can tell me if there's anything special about them.

Credit(s) are good, I don't believe I'll have a K-bit unit until pw gives me his magic wasps. I am also funding ER's boondoggle, though, so hopefully we'll find out what happens when you do... that.

I have a wasp too. She’s eager to explore and will help in the next Kaiju fight

You'll have to sell her to one of us if you want to be able to both deploy her and do something else

[Naturegirl1999]

How much are you willing to pay? She is about as armored as a tank and is about my size

[Stirk]

How much are you willing to pay? She is about as armored as a tank and is about my size

I don't know how big you are :V

I can go 300. I can add in a kaiju heart or other parts for trade.

[Devastator]

It's a size small unit.

Also, if NG wants to deploy it herself, she can do something else this turn and deploy it next turn.  If she wants to sell it to someone else, has to do that now for use next turn.

[Naturegirl1999]

I’m deploying her next turn, this turn I’m purchasing Igor

[IronyOwl]

Update: I have been reminded that I can just buy transport boats. Not particularly good transport boats, but it's an option and opens me up to letting a mad scientist add bigger and more evil storage bays before reverse engineering it into mass producible transport boats.

Also update: I think I offered this a while back, but I'm willing to pay for lab size upgrades for mad scientists who might at some point work on my boats. If Huge-sized labs require research, I'm willing to pay in usable Kaiju bits for the trouble of researching as well as credits to cover the cost of upgrading. Naturally, I also have plenty of cash and bits to pay for any work you end up doing on my submarine or other boats.

I can go 300. I can add in a kaiju heart or other parts for trade.

Let syv take a look if possible, he might be able to tell us if she'd be worth reverse engineering as a stopgap unit until we get our more advanced stuff online. Doing so anyway might give us insight into the difference between mad science units and their reverse engineered, mass producible equivalents.

[syvarris]

@Irony

I should have access to detailed information about naval transports, since they should qualify as basic military units.  I'll ask Dev about them.  I expect the answer is "they're much better than air transport, but would need upgrades to be able to deploy anywhere in the world rather than only in limited theaters."  If you can get that sub upgraded to go anywhere, it'd be a great way to estimate the cost of upgrading naval transports.

I'll start work on improved air transport this turn.  I'll... run the numbers soonish, see how much of a loan I can use.

As for K-bit costs, 50 per is the "I don't care what you're gonna do with this, set it on fire and smoke it for all I care" cost.  If you've got a project that makes sense, 30 per would be a very reasonable cost currently, and if you've got something that I really want to see, then "free" is totally a possibility.  Right now, anyway--I don't have much use for the things, but if I do end up fielding K-bit fighters or something, then this may change.

@Naturegirl

While I'm reluctant to house Mad Science projects myself without a substantial use, I would indeed be happy to look at your wasp.  If you send it to me this turn, I can ship it off to whoever buys it, before the deploy turn.  Functionally, they should get their unit at the same time as normal, the only difference would be that I could say how good the unit is.

I'd also like you to specify how many turns you've worked on the wasp, and ideally it'd be nice to know what your actions were during those turns.  If you spent three turns making the wasp tougher, for instance, it'd be very very useful to know how much toughness that added in a functional way.

The below spoiler is a response to Stirk, and is not meant to be hidden information.

Spoiler: @Stirk, I increasingly feel like you are deliberately trying to waste my time. (click to show/hide)

We've had multiple missions that where on a timer. I haven't seen any which wasn't
-First kaiju: Held off by K-com units, time allows it to be destroyed
-Second Kaiju: Naval support from the locals
-Third Kaiju: Send a couple of APCs while preparing to use the time to zerg swarm the Kaiju
-Fourth escapes because we couldn't hold it off long enough for the Italian military to show up

In all cases the locals have attempted to fight them off themselves and it always had the implication that if we can hold them off long enough the local military will assist with enough force that we should be victorious.

I increasingly feel like you are deliberately trying to waste my time.

You are correct in that all missions have involved some degree of NPC assistance, usually gated behind a timer.  The naval example is debatable, since there was no mention of further units being scrambled, but there was mention of other ships being posted along the shore, and it's not unreasonable that some could have come to reinforce the city within an hour or so.  That said, I really don't think these are persuasive arguments in favor of trying to last longer during battles.  The description of the first kaiju's destruction implies that it was the near lethal damage we inflicted which allowed the military to defeat it--and even beyond that, the military was holding position ("dug in infantry"), so they would not have arrived to help at any point.  Even if they were coming, we would have had to survive at minimum 50% longer than we did for their reinforcements to arrive (the spider stopped for twenty minutes after finishing us off).  The second and third kaiju explicitly would have destroyed very large amounts of the city if we had not been able to stop them; the second had been in the city while we were fighting, and the military had chosen to write off most of the city instead of engaging it.  In the fourth fight, the kaiju did indeed destroy 75% of the city due to how long we took fighting it, and again the military never arrived to defeat it.

All that being said, you do have an argument.  If city damage is not a good metric for success, and the "timers" aren't substantially longer than our combats have tended to be, then trying for extended battles may be a viable strategy.  Frankly, the evidence seems to be against this, but I'll have to ask Dev to clarify.

Toughness buffs work both in cost of units (they reduce how many replacements you need to buy) and in practicality (more defense = more time on the field = more damage).

Again, this only applies if the units are attacked.  In an expected TPK scenario, then yes, 100% of your buffed armor will be used, and thus will provide 100% value.  However, in a scenario where we take only 50% losses, only the 50% of units with the highest individual damage will be attacked, and therefore only their armor will matter.

Ideally, I think we should design units to help us minimize casualties, rather than optimizing them for complete failures.  Therefore, it's useful to armor the units that will get attacked first, as we will get use out of those units, whether we do very well (like in the last fight), or do very poorly (as in the fourth fight).  Optimizing only for the latter leaves us in a worse position.

More damage isn't an end all in killing kaiju, as far as I've seen.

And you base this off of... the fact that 20% of the Kaiju we've faced were killed by an external force?  The first was killed by military that explicitly had an easy time thanks to the damage we dealt.  The second and third were killed largely by us, with only minor assistance from military forces.  Nothing mattered in the fourth fight beyond the damage that we did.  The fifth fight we did receive assistance from an allied miliary, but was still largely killed by K-com forces.

Exclusively building glass cannons isn't optimal, no.  I'm not arguing for that.  I'm arguing for a balance between high damage but fragile units, and higher damage and very tough units, to exploit an apparent weakness.  You're arguing to ignore that weakness and assume randomized targeting, which we have no evidence for.

Indeed, toughness that isn't actually touched is useless, because it does not affect the outcome of the battle.  If you spend 500 on making your DPS units tougher, and none of them die (or, as seems somewhat likely, they all get oneshot anyway), then you effectively gained nothing from spending that money, when you would have definitely gained something from spending 500 on better damage--likely a faster kill, which means less city destruction, which means better pay.  And less kaiju attacks suffered, for us.  More damage is always good, you can't have too much damage.

In all the fights we've seen so far it has mattered. We haven't seen one fight where we took no casualties. We've seen a couple where we took 100% casualties. If we can't bring it up to the point that we'd get at least two hits in, then you'd be right...but the same could be said if you upgrade your weapon and it doesn't reduce the hits to kill on the kaiju. That doesn't mean upgrading a weapon is useless, it means that you took a specific case where it would be useless entirely to imply it would always be the case.

Sigh.  Yes, the snipe about light armor being useless wasn't a good argument.  The rest of my point stands.  If you design units that have increased toughness, and only half of them get hit, you effectively gained no benefit from half of the upgrades.  If you design units that have increased damage, and only half of them get hit, it... doesn't matter.  Whether they all survive (the outcome we want), or they all die (an outcome we've had before), if they were alive for some period of time they got to shoot at the Kaiju.

Also, I haven't been arguing this point, but there's also the fact that focusing armor on a limited number of units should be just as efficient or more efficient than spreading it among all units, even over a longer period of time.  This, at least, is mostly theoretical--I can draw extrapolations from the prices and stat distributions only from base units, since I don't have much data on improved units.

If we really want to, we could come up with some way to aggro the kaiju (ex pheromones from parts, irritating sonic/chemical weapons, or just a bunch of flashing lights)...though I doubt infantry would be the ideal placement for such tools.

These are all awesome ideas which I fully support.  I'll happily throw kaiju bits at you, if you want to use them to develop such a thing.  Free of charge.

I'd rather convince someone else to be the decoy then sending my own dudes out for that job :V

You're the only person working on high durability tank units.  Egan's planning to work on high durability catgirls, but as you said yourself, infantry would not be the ideal placement of taunt tools.

There's also the fact that this is, y'know, a cooperative game.  We succeed or fail together.  That's... kinda why I'm trying to explain optimal strategy to you, at all.  _{^{I'd be much happier right now if this were adversarial, so I could sit back and cackle as you shoot yourself in the foot.}}

[Egan_BW]

Naval transports might also become more viable as I get more kaiju detection facilities working, as we'll be able to send out slow boats earlier if we can see where kaiju are headed.

[Devastator]

Spoiler: syv, stirk (click to show/hide)

Calm down.  I would like to remind you that none of you know exactly what the tactical situation is, and that there are weapon systems available for kaiju that have not been seen on the battlefield yet.  Stirk's decisions are defensable and understandable.. most of those researchers, for instance, went for very small amounts of money, and there wasn't always research buildings to put them in, or 20 bucks to even use them at all.

Same with pursuing k-bits for modifiers, for instance.  Those might apply to many other units, for instance, instead of just the one being built.  And if you use k-bits for your main combatants, you should remember that k-bits are only recovered following a successful battle.  If you lose, which is quite possible, you don't get k-bits.  If your now-fragged units all require k-bits to produce, losing a battle or two might snowball into an unwinnable situation.  If you lose one or two modifiers, you can still field a new army.

So stay calm and remember that you don't know everything, and that someone having a different view of the situation may in fact be the correct one.  That's not to say that you can never be wrong, or there's no point in trying to optimize or do better, but that no one person knows the right path through, not even myself.

I'm also happy to go over some of the details of the post-battle events if you'd like some specific knowledge as to the interactions with the military responders, as to how valuable winning time is and what not.

[Naturegirl1999]

Send Waspra to USSCI

“Let’s go outside. There’s a place where people will figure out you ability to hunt creatures thousands of times larger than yourself”

I’ve grown her to the size of a human, figured out her stings are venomous, and built an artificial exoskeleton for her to supplement her natural one

[Stirk]

@Irony

I should have access to detailed information about naval transports, since they should qualify as basic military units.  I'll ask Dev about them.  I expect the answer is "they're much better than air transport, but would need upgrades to be able to deploy anywhere in the world rather than only in limited theaters."  If you can get that sub upgraded to go anywhere, it'd be a great way to estimate the cost of upgrading naval transports.

I'll start work on improved air transport this turn.  I'll... run the numbers soonish, see how much of a loan I can use.

As for K-bit costs, 50 per is the "I don't care what you're gonna do with this, set it on fire and smoke it for all I care" cost.  If you've got a project that makes sense, 30 per would be a very reasonable cost currently, and if you've got something that I really want to see, then "free" is totally a possibility.  Right now, anyway--I don't have much use for the things, but if I do end up fielding K-bit fighters or something, then this may change.

@Naturegirl

While I'm reluctant to house Mad Science projects myself without a substantial use, I would indeed be happy to look at your wasp.  If you send it to me this turn, I can ship it off to whoever buys it, before the deploy turn.  Functionally, they should get their unit at the same time as normal, the only difference would be that I could say how good the unit is.

I'd also like you to specify how many turns you've worked on the wasp, and ideally it'd be nice to know what your actions were during those turns.  If you spent three turns making the wasp tougher, for instance, it'd be very very useful to know how much toughness that added in a functional way.

The below spoiler is a response to Stirk, and is not meant to be hidden information.

Spoiler: @Stirk, I increasingly feel like you are deliberately trying to waste my time. (click to show/hide)

We've had multiple missions that where on a timer. I haven't seen any which wasn't
-First kaiju: Held off by K-com units, time allows it to be destroyed
-Second Kaiju: Naval support from the locals
-Third Kaiju: Send a couple of APCs while preparing to use the time to zerg swarm the Kaiju
-Fourth escapes because we couldn't hold it off long enough for the Italian military to show up

In all cases the locals have attempted to fight them off themselves and it always had the implication that if we can hold them off long enough the local military will assist with enough force that we should be victorious.

I increasingly feel like you are deliberately trying to waste my time.

You are correct in that all missions have involved some degree of NPC assistance, usually gated behind a timer.  The naval example is debatable, since there was no mention of further units being scrambled, but there was mention of other ships being posted along the shore, and it's not unreasonable that some could have come to reinforce the city within an hour or so.  That said, I really don't think these are persuasive arguments in favor of trying to last longer during battles.  The description of the first kaiju's destruction implies that it was the near lethal damage we inflicted which allowed the military to defeat it--and even beyond that, the military was holding position ("dug in infantry"), so they would not have arrived to help at any point.  Even if they were coming, we would have had to survive at minimum 50% longer than we did for their reinforcements to arrive (the spider stopped for twenty minutes after finishing us off).  The second and third kaiju explicitly would have destroyed very large amounts of the city if we had not been able to stop them; the second had been in the city while we were fighting, and the military had chosen to write off most of the city instead of engaging it.  In the fourth fight, the kaiju did indeed destroy 75% of the city due to how long we took fighting it, and again the military never arrived to defeat it.

All that being said, you do have an argument.  If city damage is not a good metric for success, and the "timers" aren't substantially longer than our combats have tended to be, then trying for extended battles may be a viable strategy.  Frankly, the evidence seems to be against this, but I'll have to ask Dev to clarify.

Toughness buffs work both in cost of units (they reduce how many replacements you need to buy) and in practicality (more defense = more time on the field = more damage).

Again, this only applies if the units are attacked.  In an expected TPK scenario, then yes, 100% of your buffed armor will be used, and thus will provide 100% value.  However, in a scenario where we take only 50% losses, only the 50% of units with the highest individual damage will be attacked, and therefore only their armor will matter.

Ideally, I think we should design units to help us minimize casualties, rather than optimizing them for complete failures.  Therefore, it's useful to armor the units that will get attacked first, as we will get use out of those units, whether we do very well (like in the last fight), or do very poorly (as in the fourth fight).  Optimizing only for the latter leaves us in a worse position.

More damage isn't an end all in killing kaiju, as far as I've seen.

And you base this off of... the fact that 20% of the Kaiju we've faced were killed by an external force?  The first was killed by military that explicitly had an easy time thanks to the damage we dealt.  The second and third were killed largely by us, with only minor assistance from military forces.  Nothing mattered in the fourth fight beyond the damage that we did.  The fifth fight we did receive assistance from an allied miliary, but was still largely killed by K-com forces.

Exclusively building glass cannons isn't optimal, no.  I'm not arguing for that.  I'm arguing for a balance between high damage but fragile units, and higher damage and very tough units, to exploit an apparent weakness.  You're arguing to ignore that weakness and assume randomized targeting, which we have no evidence for.

Indeed, toughness that isn't actually touched is useless, because it does not affect the outcome of the battle.  If you spend 500 on making your DPS units tougher, and none of them die (or, as seems somewhat likely, they all get oneshot anyway), then you effectively gained nothing from spending that money, when you would have definitely gained something from spending 500 on better damage--likely a faster kill, which means less city destruction, which means better pay.  And less kaiju attacks suffered, for us.  More damage is always good, you can't have too much damage.

In all the fights we've seen so far it has mattered. We haven't seen one fight where we took no casualties. We've seen a couple where we took 100% casualties. If we can't bring it up to the point that we'd get at least two hits in, then you'd be right...but the same could be said if you upgrade your weapon and it doesn't reduce the hits to kill on the kaiju. That doesn't mean upgrading a weapon is useless, it means that you took a specific case where it would be useless entirely to imply it would always be the case.

Sigh.  Yes, the snipe about light armor being useless wasn't a good argument.  The rest of my point stands.  If you design units that have increased toughness, and only half of them get hit, you effectively gained no benefit from half of the upgrades.  If you design units that have increased damage, and only half of them get hit, it... doesn't matter.  Whether they all survive (the outcome we want), or they all die (an outcome we've had before), if they were alive for some period of time they got to shoot at the Kaiju.

Also, I haven't been arguing this point, but there's also the fact that focusing armor on a limited number of units should be just as efficient or more efficient than spreading it among all units, even over a longer period of time.  This, at least, is mostly theoretical--I can draw extrapolations from the prices and stat distributions only from base units, since I don't have much data on improved units.

If we really want to, we could come up with some way to aggro the kaiju (ex pheromones from parts, irritating sonic/chemical weapons, or just a bunch of flashing lights)...though I doubt infantry would be the ideal placement for such tools.

These are all awesome ideas which I fully support.  I'll happily throw kaiju bits at you, if you want to use them to develop such a thing.  Free of charge.

I'd rather convince someone else to be the decoy then sending my own dudes out for that job :V

You're the only person working on high durability tank units.  Egan's planning to work on high durability catgirls, but as you said yourself, infantry would not be the ideal placement of taunt tools.

There's also the fact that this is, y'know, a cooperative game.  We succeed or fail together.  That's... kinda why I'm trying to explain optimal strategy to you, at all.  _{^{I'd be much happier right now if this were adversarial, so I could sit back and cackle as you shoot yourself in the foot.}}

What me? Waste time? Never! Ask anyone. I'm sure they'd all tell you I'm not someone who would do that.

You are correct in that all missions have involved some degree of NPC assistance, usually gated behind a timer.  The naval example is debatable, since there was no mention of further units being scrambled, but there was mention of other ships being posted along the shore, and it's not unreasonable that some could have come to reinforce the city within an hour or so.  That said, I really don't think these are persuasive arguments in favor of trying to last longer during battles.  The description of the first kaiju's destruction implies that it was the near lethal damage we inflicted which allowed the military to defeat it--and even beyond that, the military was holding position ("dug in infantry"), so they would not have arrived to help at any point.  Even if they were coming, we would have had to survive at minimum 50% longer than we did for their reinforcements to arrive (the spider stopped for twenty minutes after finishing us off).  The second and third kaiju explicitly would have destroyed very large amounts of the city if we had not been able to stop them; the second had been in the city while we were fighting, and the military had chosen to write off most of the city instead of engaging it.  In the fourth fight, the kaiju did indeed destroy 75% of the city due to how long we took fighting it, and again the military never arrived to defeat it.

All that being said, you do have an argument.  If city damage is not a good metric for success, and the "timers" aren't substantially longer than our combats have tended to be, then trying for extended battles may be a viable strategy.  Frankly, the evidence seems to be against this, but I'll have to ask Dev to clarify.

Why are you under the impression that better defenses would fail to decrease the collateral damage that a kaiju is capable of inflicting? If he is capable of making a force field that can withstand the assault, then it stands to reason that the attacks directed at it will deal less damage to the surroundings while still buying time. Conversely larger weapons are liable to do damage to the city themselves - especially if we start to invest in things like the massive submarine.

If you actually look at the things you quoted, the first mission specifically notes that the "The time bought, perhaps an extra hour," was one of the factors that allowed it to be taken down. While they would have been unable to assist us, by running out the timer we directly allowed the kaiju to be destroyed before it could have done any harm to the city. Furthermore if we end up investing in kaiju detection technology allowing us to intercept them outside of cities, then we can start said timer much earlier and combat them in areas where fighting doesn't destroy the city. In the second case the "wrote off the city" meaning that they could bombard it with all the naval support without worrying about collateral damage. It doesn't mean they where not going to help us. The Fourth had the military show up - but after it had already left as an example of a failure because we couldn't hold out the clock. The way it was written implied that if we had been able to hold out longer we would have had the military support.

Again, this only applies if the units are attacked.  In an expected TPK scenario, then yes, 100% of your buffed armor will be used, and thus will provide 100% value.  However, in a scenario where we take only 50% losses, only the 50% of units with the highest individual damage will be attacked, and therefore only their armor will matter.

In what way is "only" 50% of all our units needing armor suggesting that it isn't optimal?

And you base this off of... the fact that 20% of the Kaiju we've faced were killed by an external force?  The first was killed by military that explicitly had an easy time thanks to the damage we dealt.  The second and third were killed largely by us, with only minor assistance from military forces.  Nothing mattered in the fourth fight beyond the damage that we did.  The fifth fight we did receive assistance from an allied miliary, but was still largely killed by K-com forces.

Exclusively building glass cannons isn't optimal, no.  I'm not arguing for that.  I'm arguing for a balance between high damage but fragile units, and higher damage and very tough units, to exploit an apparent weakness.  You're arguing to ignore that weakness and assume randomized targeting, which we have no evidence for.

"You see how the local military keeps trying to help out and will do so if we keep stalling? That means we can make defenses last long enough for us to get backup and we can win!"
"LOl what are you basing that off of the fact that two out of five kaiju got destroyed by running out the clock and making our defenses last long enough lol don't waste my time peon firepower is all that matters"

I'm not assuming randomized targets. I'm pointing out the fact that all our toughest units keep getting crunched and we haven't really had a fight where increasing armor for infantry units wouldn't have helped. 100% of our units are in the line of fire, 100% of our units need armor and can be attacked. If it only ends up attacking 50% of our units then 50% of our units needed armor - even going under the assumption that these units are always the strongest unless 50% of our units are super tanks then some off-tanks are going to get blown up.

Sigh.  Yes, the snipe about light armor being useless wasn't a good argument.  The rest of my point stands.  If you design units that have increased toughness, and only half of them get hit, you effectively gained no benefit from half of the upgrades.  If you design units that have increased damage, and only half of them get hit, it... doesn't matter.  Whether they all survive (the outcome we want), or they all die (an outcome we've had before), if they were alive for some period of time they got to shoot at the Kaiju.

Also, I haven't been arguing this point, but there's also the fact that focusing armor on a limited number of units should be just as efficient or more efficient than spreading it among all units, even over a longer period of time.  This, at least, is mostly theoretical--I can draw extrapolations from the prices and stat distributions only from base units, since I don't have much data on improved units.

You didn't gain no benefit. They all benefit from not getting shot as much, since it took more effort to kill the first half. It increases our overall hit-to-kill and makes the overall fighting organism stronger. It will always increase the time they have to fire at the kaiju.

Lets look at it this way. Lets say we can have all our units have a damage of 2 and take 2 hits to kill, or we can have a damage of 4 and take 1 hit to kill. We have five units in both cases. First turn group 1 gets 10 damage, group 2 gets 20 and loses a man. You keep going like that and after 5 turns, team 2 is wiped out with a total of 60 damage. Team 1 keeps going for 10 turns and does a total of...60 damage. The end result is the same, if they both fight to the death. So doubling your firepower is effectively the same as doubling your defenses. Team 1 has the advantage if this thing has over 60 HP, since it stalled for twice the time as team 2. Team 2 has the advantage if we can kill the kaiju in 60 or under - eliminating it outright....which we've been able to do equally as often as we've had allied units destroy the kaiju.

If we compare this to a "Only 50% of our units get hit!" case with team A of damage 2 and 2 hit kill with team B damage 2 1 hit kill with a team of six, then team A would still have double the damage since all the units getting hit arn't dying until the second hit. The turns thing doesn't work here as well, given the criteria is about how many where totaled.

[Devastator]

As for the military support for the battles, here's how it went down behind the scene:

In Bangladesh you bought the military space and time.  It never would have helped you directly with the battle, no matter how long it took, but you won enough time (by a decent margin) to grant them extra space to lose before any city destruction occurred.  Them defeating the weakened Kaiju was a very near thing, not guaranteed at all.

In Malaya the forces were far too weak to assault on their own.  If you had crumbled, the Kaiju would have crushed the city and made it back to the water safely.  Time did matter in that you arrived before much damage could be done by the Kaiju walking inland, but the local forces wouldn't have fought it for you, other than the volunteers who did from the start.

In Australia the navy was strung out along the coast, with the heavy units by Sydney, and they weren't concentrated.  If you'd left the kaiju heavily damaged and barely functional, they would have steamed up to try and finish it off, but if you'd done little to no damage they'd have remained concentrated to defend the larger city.  In either case they weren't moving up fast to engage, simply moving to concentrate to interfere after the battle.  If you'd gotten the advantage and managed to reach a better position before combat the navy might have reinforced right away and been steaming in to arrive during the battle.  As is, the navy vessel got one-shotted and the rest of the navy wasn't going to engage before concentrating fully.

In Taranto the army was not available and wouldn't have responded in time no matter what occurred.

There's a wide variety in degree and type of allied support available, depending on location, real world geography, and a certain degree of randomness.  There may be things you can research to assist with these problems, but right now it's hard to put any hard and fast rule to it, other than that the national armies will not be able to defeat the kaiju for you.. they can sometimes assist you, but with the exception of the most recent battle, you can't really expect them to win.  (And even then, your intervention limited damage to the city.)

[IronyOwl]

Happytime Atrocities Inc June Purchase Orders

-Construct Large Hangar x3 (-150)
-Recruit Infantry Unit (-50)
-Egghead 1: Continue research on Huge Giant Aquatic-Only Hangars (-20)
-Egghead 2: Dissect Kaiju muscle, send bits to Dr. Pelican so he can build me a wasp nest (-20, -1 Kaiju Muscle)
-Send 100 credits to Lord Silver to cover the cost of his lab upgrade (-100)
-Send 20 credits to Smoke Knights to cover maintenance of that submarine they're supposedly holding for me (-20)
-Purchase USSCCI's three kaiju parts for 50 each (-150)
-Pay Emerald Robin 80 Credits for their kaiju parts (-80)

Spoiler: Secret Bids (click to show/hide)

Bid 300 on the new tank.
Bid 200 on the egghead.

If anyone has any already-processed kaiju muscle bits, I could use a quick loan.