Ad Astra! ... an Aurora Forum Game, run by blue emu

[Stuckenschmidt]

Not to rain on the parade, but if these guys just pop'd into existance, they probably won't have that much money. Might as well keep them around as trading partners and an example of human benevolence towards it's lesser.

Splendid, my good Sir. *nods*

[A_Dane]

As a completely objective leader of a battalion of assault marines, I say we focus all on invading the seals, take their money and... remove them

With the words from a danish television show: "Baby seals are the greatest threat to the perfect surveillance society" - We really have to do remove them, to ensure our conteniued survival!

[Bossemanden]

Just to add a real-world parallel. In Greenland the (moronic) homerule funded a crazy/smart Canadian salesman and his "secret recipe" for seal-sausage. Turns out the product was partially uneatable and totally unsaleable. Losses were fairly large for such a small community (approx 50k people). As I remember to the tune of 50 mill $ or so. Only person that made money of it was of course said Canadian salesman.

The morale of the story naturally is that eating Seal might not be such a good idea. At least not until you know what youre going to eat.


Ingame of course my scientist character has no idea whatsoever what goes on outside his lab and thus has no oppinion.

[A_Dane]

No one has said anything about eating seals, only clubbing them

[Galleblære]

No one has said anything about eating seals, only clubbing them

We can make rocket fuel using the blubber.

[stamasd]

We can make rocket fuel using the blubber.

Or salami, like they did on Mythbusters.

[Galleblære]

Or salami, like they did on Mythbusters.

Hehe, I believe that was debunked by themselves later though. It was not the salami that acted as the propellant, but starting trigger.

[Chopain]

Lt-Commander Chopain formally requesting freighter #8 to be renamed "Nostromo" On a second topic I would like to discuss my contract as I believe I should be paid more.

[Väinö I]

we are already researching "Drop Pods". It will be done in... ummm... four years or so. But that's at minimum funding (one Lab). I can increase the funding as soon as another project finishes, and have it finished sometime this year. Then there's the matter of designing, retooling, and building an Assault Carrier or three.

Like Iche_Bins said, I don't think you *need* the pods to do the invasion. You only need them if you don't care to stay still in the orbit for 12 hours while the troops unload, as in that time even conventional ICBMs can wreck your ships.

[Reilnur]

Lt-Commander Chopain formally requesting freighter #8 to be renamed "Nostromo" On a second topic I would like to discuss my contract as I believe I should be paid more.

I believe there already is a starship Nostromo. Weren't they the first ones to land on the Charlie homeworld, or Dravar XV?

[Iche_Bins]

Like Iche_Bins said, I don't think you *need* the pods to do the invasion. You only need them if you don't care to stay still in the orbit for 12 hours while the troops unload, as in that time even conventional ICBMs can wreck your ships.

Yep, but I think you would see any misslebasis if you send your ships there to scan. You could easily take them out though

[GaiusC]

Well, we have years before we could actually conquer them.
The obvious way is to remain friendly with them, trade a bit, and let relations improve until the point where we actually have the means to attack. Then, we'll decide, depending on the situation in 2 or 3 years.

[Väinö I]

Yep, but I think you would see any misslebasis if you send your ships there to scan. You could easily take them out though

Yeah, we'd need to a ship with active sensors to do the scan, since the conventional missile bases don't have anything those survey ships could spot.

[blue emu]

Not to rain on the parade, but if these guys just pop'd into existance, they probably won't have that much money.

They could hardly have LESS money than we do...

Well, we have years before we could actually conquer them.
The obvious way is to remain friendly with them, trade a bit, and let relations improve until the point where we actually have the means to attack. Then, we'll decide, depending on the situation in 2 or 3 years.

This. It will be years before we have enough Ground Troops built to conquer a whole world anyway... it typically takes more than one Division.

Our next economic break-point will come when the current retooling is done, and we can see whether our current warships can be converted to 2nd-generation ships, or will need to be replaced rather than rebuilt. If they will need to be completely replaced... we might as well send our Navy over to fight the Prix in that wreckage-filled system near Sigma Draconis. That at least will get some use out of our obsolescent ships, and might allow us to recover the wreckage and learn some new techs.

[stamasd]

Just make sure you don't send the old ships to the wolves before you build the new ones.

[calestos]

They could hardly have LESS money than we do...



This. It will be years before we have enough Ground Troops built to conquer a whole world anyway... it typically takes more than one Division.

Our next economic break-point will come when the current retooling is done, and we can see whether our current warships can be converted to 2nd-generation ships, or will need to be replaced rather than rebuilt. If they will need to be completely replaced... we might as well send our Navy over to fight the Prix in that wreckage-filled system near Sigma Draconis. That at least will get some use out of our obsolescent ships, and might allow us to recover the wreckage and learn some new techs.

Losses of the obsolete ships ok, but we need win the battle.

[Tuominen]

Cost analysis would be in place... how much must be invested to be able to conquer them and how much that same amount of money would produce if invetested in elsewhere? Of course having the invasion ability would help with other times when you need to conquest something.

[blue emu]

July 4th, 2031. Our 3-slip shipyard has finished tooling up for the new Mountain-II class, and I can now check to see whether it is practical to refit our first-generation Carriers up to the much-improved Mountain-II version. The result is right on the borderline: the refit will require 17 months. That's rather more than half the time it would take to build some new ones instead... but of course building new ones instead would double the size of our Battle Fleet.

Tough call. I have decided to go ahead with the refit. There's no prize for having the second-best Naval vessels in a fight.

Money down to 503 bucks. We'll be broke by the end of the month. Hopefully, it won't slow down the refits.

Our last queued Research Lab has finished, and I've switched over... perhaps a bit belatedly... to building nothing but Financial Centers.

[Velko]

I'd say that the Mountain I class shouldn't have been built in the first place. There was no benefit of building ships that became obsolete almost immediately upon completion. They were not used between sliding off the yards and being slid back for refits.

Of course, 20/20 hindsight and all that...

[blue emu]

I'd say that the Mountain I class shouldn't have been built in the first place. There was no benefit of building ships that became obsolete almost immediately upon completion. They were not used between sliding off the yards and being slid back for refits.

Of course, 20/20 hindsight and all that...

Agreed. Still... I warned all concerned that I'm an utter noob at this game. This is my first game to go beyond two years. Consider it a learning experience... after all, the in-game characters will also be doing this for the first time, since you don't usually get much chance to practice in real life; you just get tossed into situations and have to cope with them as best you can.