Ljosalfar IN SPACE!: Bobchillingworth hugs a fungus

[Bobchillingworth]

Worth mentioning here: I'm going to start gearing up soon for an invasion of Nic. I need to double-check to be sure that Sareln's former capital is coastal, but if so I'm going to try to raze it.


I can already build marines (finished one last turn, have another under completion), and I'll bulb the tech for Spore Launchers in two turns. Assuming Spore Launchers can attack off of ships (something else I need to test), I'm envisioning an invasion force consisting of something like three or four Isles of the Deep (two to carry troops, one just to defend the stack from hostile Isles), a Cargo Foil, three Marines, two Mindworms and two Spore Launchers.


That's a bit of investment, although I already have a few of the units on hand already. My main question is whether I want to hold off on assembling everybody for a little while so that I can produce a sea colony pod from my capital and probably another one elsewhere. I'm thinking no- for the forces I need, I already have three Isles close by on hand (albeit none with promotions), a Marine, a Unity Foil I could upgrade, and I'll be capturing some Mindworms soon (although they'd have a bit of a distance to travel to reach the staging site). My capital should be able to produce about 2 marines every three turns, so that's not too much of an investment. My present sea colony can produce native life fairly quickly, thanks to a huge food surplus, as can my second city close to my capital. So I think I can get everything built within about 4 turns, using production from only three cities.



Goal of invading Nic is to deprive him of both the closest enemy port to my shores, and Unity Hydroponics. Also to help Mist out some, since we seem to be default allies thanks to Selrahc's dumb espionage alliance with Nic.




Question for lurkers: How many turns on quick speed can I delay a military unit build before it starts to lose hammers? Is that rate consistent for Planefall?

[Mardoc]

I believe it's 6 turns until hammer decay for units, 20 or 30 for buildings. Haven't tested in Planetfall, but I can't imagine why it'd be different.

Aren't you worried about increasing the Armageddon Counter with your little project? :neenernee

[Bobchillingworth]

Cool, thanks =) My city presently building a Marine will switch to an 8-turn colony pod next turn, I think- looks like I'll have to remember to throw another turn into the Marine before the pod finishes.


I wish I could raise the dang FC :neenernee Having very few options for increasing it is frustrating. Right now like all I can do is try to spawn the occasional Transcend and avoid clearing fungus. I could also build the Concordant for a big boost, but all my Transcends are going to be on bulb duty for like forever. Eventually I can start planting fungus and seafungus (seafungus being a much, much bigger deal due to vastly better spam prospects), and building communes, but that's really far off.

[Mardoc]

Cool, thanks =) My city presently building a Marine will switch to an 8-turn colony pod next turn, I think- looks like I'll have to remember to throw another turn into the Marine before the pod finishes.

Don't think it works that way - you can't reset the hammer decay counter by anything but finishing the unit.

On the other hand, I think decay is something like 1% of the hammers invested, or 1, whichever's higher. So you'd only be looking at losing ~2 hammers to decay.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yay, that's Supply Trawler... uh... #7?



Assuming it survives the IBT, I'll get it to port at my Garland Crater city & use it either to rush a Perimeter Defense in a certain location or complete half the Centuari Preserve.



Lost my C IV Gunboat to an enemy Isle attack which was both unexpected and a real shame, but on the plus side I captured an Isle with 4 exp

[Bobchillingworth]

Popped four pods, good results from each :













Assuming I can get those Supply units back alive, that should be enough to easily secure the +1 Planet Attitude wonder.



Also captured my first regular Mindworm:




He's eating up part of my unit allowance, but I do need free defenders.



You can also see my military build-up in progress here:




Unfortunately, I may need to call it off. Reasons: my Transcend cannot bulb Psionics in a single turn, contrary to my assumption, necessitating four extra turns spent on research. Also, Spore Launchers cannot attack off boats, which I just tested and learned to my surprise. That means I'd be raiding his city without collateral support, since having to land on Nic's coast before attacking gives him an extra turn to reinforce / bombard me / counter-attack. I don't know if I can throw enough basic Marines and Worms at him to make this work- there is a decent chance he has a Bunker in the city, and it's already going to take two units of mine to kill every Genite of his. It wouldn't be too difficult for me to just build a ton of Worms to throw at him, except the issue that I have so many dang Isles that I'm constantly hitting my unit cap. And I don't want to delete most of those, since I do still need them for sea superiority and pod popping.


Anyway, I'll re-evaluate the situation next turn, decide whether I am willing to really invest in an attack. One advantage of attempting a sea invasion is that, should I not like the looks of my odds, I can always retreat and not have completely squandered my unit investment (unless Nic has a powerful navy waiting for me, and I don't think he does). If this weren't the case, I'd abandon the attack right now- as it stands, I'm still considering going for it.

[Bobchillingworth]

Arghh, some idiot Isle killed one of my Supply Trawlers. I captured it, but I'd have much rather had the Trawler



Decided to go ahead with the Nic attack. It doesn't set me back too badly since a third of the troops (accounting for half or more of the hammers) I need I have already captured for free. I'll just use Worms instead of Spore Throwers.

[Maniac]

Also, Spore Launchers cannot attack off boats, which I just tested and learned to my surprise.

Ah yes, BtS added code causing units which can't kill a unit, to be unable to do amphib attacks. I should probably remove that code.

[Bobchillingworth]

Another turn of research for me, and an energy resource for Selrahc



Military status: 4/4 Isles ready, 3/4 Marines, 1/4 Mindworms, 3/3 Cargo Foils. A Marine completes next turn. I can also send a CII Gunboat with my forces, just in case Nic actually has his own gunboats standing by.


In less appealing news, I just realized after sending the turn that I forgot to revenge kill an Isle who picked off one of mine this turn, meaning I'm almost certain to lose another next turn. At least if I can capture this guy, he should come with good exp...

[Bobchillingworth]

Two turns of free research:





And, uh, two more turns of free research :neenernee :






I believe that is eight techs now I have obtained for free. To the best of my knowledge, I set the previous RB record for huts popped in FFH PBEM XI (or whichever the one where everyone had free adepts was). By my rough estimation, I have surpassed my previous total five times over now. I'll probably do an official total of my results after I'm either out of this game or have finally opened the last Pod on Planet, but I believe that so far I have obtained-


* Eight techs

* Seven supply units (80 free hammers each) (one lost)

* Around 600 credits, maybe more

* A Former (lost)

* An Aquaformer

* At least a half-dozen Unity Foils (all but two lost)

* A Unity Rover

* Countless water-based bonus resources, of which maybe two or three will ever be of any use to me.



In all, a good haul, although I'm not sure a few hundred free hammers and maybe a couple thousand beakers really justifies the amount of effort I have thrown into clearing every single pod on the map. Mostly I'm just driven by the fact that it's really fun to have something to look forward to every other turn =) It should be noted that my results would be much worse if I did not possess the Unity Observation Bay, which removes the lousy "cartographic data" result, and that I'm only able to open the things profitably because I am running a Planet-friendly game, and can get by using Isles which I have captured for free.




Anyway, I have graphs on Nic now, here's our relative power ratings for comparison:




I'm sure he has noticed that I'm spending all 10 of my EP against him. Not that I have really any other target anyway, since Selrahc is spending all of his against me, and Nic is presumably going to spend most of his vs. the University.


Next turn my final invasion trooper completes, and I'll start moving out turn after that. Final invasion forces should be:


* Three Isles of the Deep (one with Empathy)

* One CII, Empathy Gunboat

* Four Mindworms (half with one available mutation, the other half with two)

* Four Marines (each with one special promotion available and the ability to take CI)

* Three completely unremarkable Cargo Foils.



I'll show my attack plans once I've got everything built and stacked together.
The basic plan is very simple- I zoom in out of what I think may be the fog, see if I can raze Nic's city; if I can, it burns. If I can't, then I see what I can extort out of Nic for peace, and head back home with a bunch of troops to garrison sea colonies.