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A) Open Warfare: Shoot them as soon as we can.

15 (48.4%)

B) Cold War: Establish borders, and try to out-grow them.

16 (51.6%)

C) No War: Let's share the solar system.... For now.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 31

[RedKing]

i realized it just now...
how about:
build 60 more automines
research mining production increased of one.

What?? No. Just....no. 

We have 10K+ of ever mineral and a good mining return already. And if we did want to boost mining production, why in the name of Allah would we build automines? We have 89 million people sitting around doing nothing, and automines cost twice as much to build.

[shadenight123]

i realized it just now...
how about:
build 60 more automines
research mining production increased of one.

What?? No. Just....no. 

We have 10K+ of ever mineral and a good mining return already. And if we did want to boost mining production, why in the name of Allah would we build automines? We have 89 million people sitting around doing nothing, and automines cost twice as much to build.

we ship them to other places and other asteroids, to generate heat signatures.

[RedKing]

i realized it just now...
how about:
build 60 more automines
research mining production increased of one.

What?? No. Just....no. 

We have 10K+ of ever mineral and a good mining return already. And if we did want to boost mining production, why in the name of Allah would we build automines? We have 89 million people sitting around doing nothing, and automines cost twice as much to build.

we ship them to other places and other asteroids, to generate heat signatures.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that. Mineral packets don't generate heat signatures (or any signature, AFAIK). And if you're talking about using freighters, we could build and ship empty freighters to do the same thing.

EDIT: Ahh, ok...you want to generate Thermal and EM signatures from the microcolonies. To what end? Spamming their sensor readouts?

[shadenight123]

yes, in part, and also to keep some of them ready for when we colonize elsewhere in another system.
so we do not reduce our own mining rate while we transfer them, and in case we get harassed during the transfer, we have spares.

[RedKing]

I see what you're saying, but it seems like an unnecessary diversion and exposure to risk. If we're serious about trans-Solar expansion, it makes more sense to leave the automines on Titan, where they're safe. If we're looking to create diversions, we need to have a real plan of how this works to our advantage and what to do if/when they respond. We could seed a dozen minor planets and asteroids with automines, but then what? The emissions are going to be so low that they'll know it's a token presence (if they even detect it), and if they think it's a serious precursor to establishing footholds closer to the inner system, what's to stop them from dispatching a strike group(s) to blast each of these mining posts to oblivion? They've already beaten us in a stand-up fight, so they're not going to shy away from using force.

If missiles weren't nerfed, I'd say we could spam small missile PDCs onto half a dozen rocks in close proximity, with one larger mining base in the area to lure them in. But that won't work in this scenario. And all other weapons are far too short of a range to pull such a trap.

[shadenight123]

point is, they'd move their fleet.
i know i tend to speak all sun-tzu like, but, the point is that by placing tokens, in different places, we would have an hindsight on where they want to go, we could make them burn fuels, or even go all "what s the point in attacking twenty different objectives made of one single automine? let's ignore it!" then we just swap the automines with armed pdcs.
then, after a while, when they start pondering why some asteroids are increasing in heat signals, they'll discover they have become fortified positions.
or if they go all round attacking anything they waste fuel and ammo, and depending on the circumstances, we could ambush them on a lonely asteroid, by sending one automine, waiting for their fleet to come, and destroy it, since they wouldn't expect armed defenses if we let three or four automines get destroyed.
imho it would be difficult to pull off, but not impossible.

[RedKing]

No, I get the Sun-Tzu part: "alarm him to the front, surprise him to the rear, create an uproar in the east and strike in the west".
I'm beginning to see your strategy.

@Sheb: What's the speed of the Hufuf II? I couldn't find it listed.

[Sheb]

7875 km/s. It was listed in the older update, but I should have re-posted it.

[RedKing]

So a little better than 2:1 vs. the kaffir ships we've seen. If we could get them to divide their forces and send smaller forces (maybe even single ships) to investigate/destroy these micro-colonies, we could ambush them with packs of FACs and most likely have good results. We could send each pack to pull picket duty (dropping down to 1 km/s), which reduces their thermal signature to almost nothing...probably the same or smaller than the microcolony itself. And with the speed advantage, we should be able to easily outrun them if they show up in force.

I'll have to play around with this in the simulator.

[Ehndras]

Hmm... With the proper strategy and enough fuel, this decoy idea could work damn well.

Not so much with an AI, but against a human player...

It would only work once, maybe twice, though. A human player would either send a large fleet to eradicate targets in anger, or bunker down on their colony so as to conserve ammo and ships.

If we're going to use this decoy, we have to play smart. We need to make the PDC decoys small enough to take out a few ships then be destroyed, showing we can be defeated, or have a strike force nearby. Possibly, we can even attack their colonies while they have ships distracted.

There are so many possibilities and ways thing could go wrong, we need to prepare for them all.

[shadenight123]

if they bunker down on their homeworld, we still win.
because by doing that we can exploit anything on the sol system and increase our production and mining rate.
the only thing which can go wrong is them going straight for our planet when our ships are away, but if we keep pdc in constant production some are bound to be on planet in case of their strikes.

[Ehndras]

Actually, we can always produce a few small FACs with missiles to murder their scouts and aid the PDCs, keeping the majority of our fleet on our main colony. If they gun straight for us, we'll be ready for them. It'd be odd though, since them attacking a supposed colony would be an aggression upon US, not them.

Either way, there are dozens of manners in which to exploit their human traits.

[MonkeyHead]

The "target rich bait with stings in the tail" idea is fucking devious and I love it. There is no obviously visible drawback. Do it. I would wager that our opponents would probably enage a small number of them using formations of large ships, geustimating on the previous engagement. Choosing our fights carefully, a small number of FAC lost in exchange for knocking out larger valuable enemy fleet assets seems a good idea.

[shadenight123]

if the plan function, i want to be called Admiral Shadenight. even if not admiral, the admiral title sounds good.

[Sheb]

Well, this is dead. I've got not a single replies on the other forum, despite necroing the thread twice. My fault for not updating more often.

Anyway, thanks you all for playing, it was very fun while it lasted.