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[RAM]

It is not about "cool stuff". It is about filling roles. And workers are obsolete for combat. We could benefit massively from a dedicated infantry unit with lower casualty rates. Such dedicated infantry would be less efficient than workers per unit of worker work done, as they would have to lug around additional armour or something. We really need to design more efficient workers too, likely with a new design vecause the current one is sort of dedicatedly average in everything that it does. Also I owuld like to diversify our options. If we have basic flight then we can revise it for sea-combat, river crossings, siege infiltration, attacking flying castles... but if we don't, and we also don't have king0range attackers nor thrown beetles nor telepathic attacks nor whatever else we might use then we will be starting from scratch and likely be at least two turns away from a counter that will be far too specialised because we were building something to stop something specific rather than to strengthen ourselves. If we have a basic stable of diverse options then we ought to be able to refine something into a counter fairly swiftly while furthering a desired biology.

The designs all seem to address some important aspect of the war that we are currently ill-suited for and develop useful advances. Bombadiers are basically and advancement on spitters and we have a bonus to acids. Revs, umm, I forget, something about... I recall them being useful, siege-breakers maybe? We do have problems with forts and there are forts in our path so we will need that in due course and heavy critters are handy. Vespa develops the very useful flight and grants pointy heads that work well for various "punching above your weight" tasks, along with being an effective cavalry-style unit that can focus down enemy special units such as wizards. Darters and bows, are, well, getting ranged attacks would be good, but I doubt they would work as intended without long-range sensory or prediction abilities. Lampreys are a necessary advancement into aquatic operations and, though such can wait, the immediate-term reduction in enemy reinforcements would reasonably be worth the cost. There are none that really stand out as being

In short, I object to the implication that people are only proposing new genders for the sake of playing with toys. We still need a much more balanced army and the workers are weak enough that most anything basically functional will be worth the cost of implementing. The ideas may be a bit eccentric, but we are making use of our specie's properties to fill roles that are not traditionally filled by giant insects in modern armies...

[kopout]

Changing my vote, I still like the lamprey but the vespa is more likely to win

Queen Design:
"Anatress": (1) Shadowclaw
"Novico": (6) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, NUKE9.13, Puppyguard, strongpoint, Urist Mc Dwarf
"Forest Princess" N.S.C.: (2) RAM, Wolfchild
"Silvia": (0)
"Lamana": (0)
"Minerva". (1) kopout

Designs:
Bombardier: (1) Shadowclaw
Revencher: (3) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, 10ebbor10
Vespa: (4) RAM, Wolfchild, Puppyguard, kopout
Lamprey bug: (1) andrea,
No Design
Mace tail
Advanced digging
Farming
Darter Caste: (1) Blood_Librarian
Bows ()
Tactics : Penetration of the center (4) 10ebbor10, NUKE9.13, Urist Mc Dwarf, strongpoint

[10ebbor10]

Snip

I see filling roles for the Bombardier and Revencher, but not for the Vespa.

The Vespa is design fraught with fundamental failures. It's self contradictory, and it's going to be useless.

It's not a cavalry style unit. It's range of 15 meters ensures that it's stuck in the melee phase, it doesn't have the power or endurance to do anything beyond that.

It's weapon is stupid. A creature that flies needs to be light, but you have given it a heavy ramming weapon, which rely on mass and momentum. This ensures that either it can't fly well, or it doesn't have a decent attack.

The way it attacks is stupid too. Flying creatures will need to be lightly armored to stay in the air and gave fragile wings, your idea ensures that that weakly armored creature gets stuck beyond enemy lines where it'll be annihilated. Flight relies on staying away from the enemy.

So, with the Vespa we get a melee unit that kills less than the Worker, suffers higher attrition rates and costs much more.

[NUKE9.13]

Queen Design:
"Anatress": (1) Shadowclaw
"Novico": (5) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, Puppyguard, strongpoint, Urist Mc Dwarf
"Forest Princess" N.S.C.: (2) RAM, Wolfchild
"Silvia": (0)
"Lamana": (0)
"Minerva". (1) kopout
ebbor's unnamed queen: (1) NUKE9.13

Designs:
Bombardier: (1) Shadowclaw
Revencher: (3) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, 10ebbor10
Vespa: (4) RAM, Wolfchild, Puppyguard, kopout
Lamprey bug: (1) andrea,
No Design
Mace tail
Advanced digging
Farming
Darter Caste: (1) Blood_Librarian
Bows ()
Tactics : Penetration of the center (4) 10ebbor10, NUKE9.13, Urist Mc Dwarf, strongpoint

Voting for ebbor's queen design.
Re: Drone designs. I think fixing the Hunters should take priority over creating new drones.

PPE: ebbor, I agree with you, but try to be les aggresive, hey? We're all on the same side here.

[Strongpoint]

RAM

It is not about "cool stuff". It is about filling roles

Your proposal fills no role. But  even with proposals that do fill roles like revencher, we can't fill all roles simultaneously. We are quite busy filling the role of cavalry and hunters are pretty good cavalry. Designing anything is saying - Nah, we need no hunters after all. Next turn the pattern will repeat. All our designs will be useless that way. Designs are only useful when they are produced. We can't produce everything

And workers are obsolete for combat. We could benefit massively from a dedicated infantry unit with lower casualty rates

Probably. But there are no design that even tries to replace workers in a role of generic infantry.

We really need to design more efficient workers too,

We can design purely civilian units like lumberjecks or tunnelers or  something but I don't think it is a great route to take. Nothing indicates that workers are inadequate

If we have basic flight then we can revise it for sea-combat, river crossings, siege infiltration, attacking flying castles...

We can't revise it for something... know why? Because spending turns designing useless stuff for some far future benefits will cause us losing war and being pushed back to Mentos.

If we have a basic stable of diverse options then we ought to be able to refine something into a counter fairly swiftly while furthering a desired biology.

If a have a number of diverse options of equal power, then it means wasted design power. Because our troops are inefficient.; Instead of having level 5 unit A, we'll have five level 1 Units A, B, C , D ,E. Way to lose the war

Vespa develops the very useful flight and grants pointy heads that work well for various "punching above your weight" tasks, along with being an effective cavalry-style unit that can focus down enemy special units such as wizards.

Ok, now I know your intention. You want a cavalry. I fail to see how Wespa is a cavalry (it is a very bad infantry in my books) but lets assume that it is a decent cavalry. Why the hell we need another cavalry when we already have one and it is quite decent and have good revision potential?

If you want flight for future. > Develop wings with a direct separate action. Not that we can afford more slow turns but it is far better way there.

Darters and bows, are, well, getting ranged attacks would be good, but I doubt they would work as intended without long-range sensory or prediction abilities.

Sure we need a flashy big effect to justify a design effect. No we don't. The whole thing with both darters and bows that they try to get more use from workers we produce anyway. Well darter may count as a new design and than it suffers all problems of new design. But bows (my preferred choice by far, but I think I should give up attempts to arm our bugs) are essentially free (well cost timber) way to get some ranged attack without redistributing production. Whatever new drone can't be free damage, it must be produced over something else.

Tactics, my current vote (BTW you ignored it in your analysis of proposals.) have a similar effect. They make drones we have and produce better without the need to change our production.

Also, from both tactics and bows I expect something somewhat useful effect even with 1,1,1 kind of rolls. No drone can be useful in case of bad luck.

[RAM]

It is not about "cool stuff". It is about filling roles

Your proposal fills no role.

It occupies the role of penetrating lines, focusing force, and dealing with exceptional forces. It may be light for flight, but it is still a metre-long animal with the benefit of diving with all its force focused on a single point. It should be capable of reliable killing mages through their bronze armour by making massive holes through their bodies. And it uses elements that are actually sensible, like flying beetles and armoured-shaped-head beetles. It rather precisely deals with the immediate problem that we are having of their mages doing properly unpleasant things and being able to avoid getting into trouble over it and is good progress towards highly versatile flight and armoured heads. Considering how well the hunter went, it seems wasteful to blow a design on "just" flight when we could have an actual contributor.

And workers are obsolete for combat. We could benefit massively from a dedicated infantry unit with lower casualty rates

Probably. But there are no design that even tries to replace workers in a role of generic infantry.

True, but we already have workers for that. There are more important roles that need to be filled at all before we go for mere improvements, like better infantry. Zero ways to concentrate force against a single target becoming one way to do so is a bigger improvement than good infantry against slaves becoming good infantry in general. We need ANY way to break a fortress before we get better workers. Once that is done I would love to go make some beetles with a bit more armour, some more clever armour, and throw in some formation stuff, like maybe some interlocking carapace to hold the dead in formation to protect the living...

We really need to design more efficient workers too,

We can design purely civilian units like lumberjecks or tunnelers or  something but I don't think it is a great route to take. Nothing indicates that workers are inadequate

I was not thinking specialisation to that degree unless something special comes up. Maybe diggers though, those would be nice, could really get some convoluted underground labyrinths happening for delaying tactics and defensive advantages/force bypassing... But generally make our workers proper civilians. So that they can start massively shirking their armour and reducing limb speed where they don't much need it for combat. Focus them on carrying and exerting heavy forces while we use hunters to hunt and infantry to infant... Get a decrease in worker food consumption per unit work done that dwarfs what any amount of technology could hope to achieve.

If we have basic flight then we can revise it for sea-combat, river crossings, siege infiltration, attacking flying castles...

We can't revise it for something... know why? Because spending turns designing useless stuff for some far future will cause us losing war and being pushed back to Mentos.

I do not believe it to be useless. So it is spending a turn on a good thing. But assuming it is useless it still gets us wings that can be revised into flying soldiers that, while vulnerable in the air, can still do outflanking manoeuvres of ineffable terror if we find ourselves needing to penetrate their lines in a hurry. Otherwise we would need a full design on it when maybe we need a different design on actual progress. But more likely we would put it into something that just runs through their lines on giant vulnerable runner legs and doesn't get us much because we did the tech when we were desperate and couldn't afford to do anything with any chance of partial failure.

I admit that things are looking a bit dire right now, but all the more reason to get dramatic improvement from filling roles that we lack(and I admit that the battle tactic is something that we don't have, I would consider it if we had a better voting system) that getting a meagre few percent out of a progressive increase to something that we already have. What, in total, have our designs thus far done for us in terms of actual performance that actually happened? Because a new unit with a bad die that was barely implemented seems to have been the cream of the crop...

If we have a basic stable of diverse options then we ought to be able to refine something into a counter fairly swiftly while furthering a desired biology.

If a have a number of diverse options of equal power, then it means wasted design power. Because our troops are inefficient.; Instead of having level 5 unit A, we'll have five level 1 Units A, B, C , D ,E. Way to lose the war[quote

False. If we have level 5 unait A then they build level 2 unit antiA that fights unit A on equal terms or unit overA that A has no means of attacking. Letting them have level three in five different units while we have level 6 in just the one and level absolutely-nothing in everything else is a great way to lose the war. If you want to rely upon having the best infantry in the world in order to cross the ocean then you have a lot of fail to look forwards to. Or perhaps unit A can do everything? It can reach anywhere and attack anything and resist everything? You seem to be forgetting that this game doesn't magically provide us with new units when we design them. Expensive "do everything" units will be ridiculously expensive and a handful of them won't do anything if it costs us our entire army.

Vespa develops the very useful flight and grants pointy heads that work well for various "punching above your weight" tasks, along with being an effective cavalry-style unit that can focus down enemy special units such as wizards.

Ok, now I know your intention. You want a cavalry. I fail to see how Wespa is a cavalry (it is a very bad infantry in my books) but lets assume that it is a decent cavalry. Why the hell we need another cavalry when we already have one and it is quite decent and have good revision potential?

You are wrong about my intentions, and my intentions really don't matter at all. What matters is what the G.M. will do with the design, which could be completely different from my intentions. People don't matter at all, just designs. Bt what I intend, what I see as reason to choose Vespa. Is manifold. But it is not "make cavalry". I want beetles with mostly low-specification but effective flight that provides concentrated force against specific units. The effect would be similar to precision cavalry, which is not really a thing in conventional wisdom. Cavalry conventionally worked on a formation level. There were instances of cavalry charging to reach a specific target but typically it was for interacting with formations and threats. Conventional armies didn't have wizards and glorious warriors of legend. It is a unit using our insectness instead of trying to be human. It tries to fill a needed role in the current battle that doesn't conform perfectly to conventional unit-role doctrine. Tell me how a dozen hunters can descent upon and destroy a protected wizard or a heroic spearman who just punched a truck-sized Soldier in the face and you will have a valid argument for why it is redundant, but still no argument for why we don't want basic starter wings and armoured heads. Although I admit that the winds are a little redundant with the legs but, well, wings and legs are different...

Long story short, they are not cavalry. They are a support unit that makes holes in formations and removes high-value targets. Where cavalry try to break entire battle-lines. Like close-air-support compared to tactical bombers, or snipers compared to machine-guns. But, again, not quite, because insects...

If you want flight for future. > Develop wings with a direct separate action. Not that we can afford more slow turns but it is far better way there.

I think that hunters proved that we can get more than that out of a single design. New legs, New carapace, new weapon... I used to think as you did, but I decided to try SCIENCE!! and turned out that we can do better.

Darters and bows, are, well, getting ranged attacks would be good, but I doubt they would work as intended without long-range sensory or prediction abilities.

Sure we need a flashy big effect to justify a design effect. No we don't. The whole thing with both darters and bows that they try to get more use from workers we produce anyway. Well darter may count as a new design and than it suffers all problems of new design. But bows (my preferred choice by far, but I think I should give up attempts to arm our bugs) are essentially free (well cost timber) way to get some ranged attack without redistributing production. Whatever new drone can't be free damage, it must be produced over something else.

Not free. They require dice, they require workers to construct them, they require battle-time. And they are a pathetic upgrade to our workers because our workers, in all likelihood, cannot hit the side of a barn at a hundred paces. Bows would be a pain to build and carry, darts would be a pain to generate and, well, "carry", that would actually be capable of missing an army at normal archery ranges. Not that they cannot be a part of an effective design, just that we don't currently possess sufficient means to employ them to justify their production, o they are a waste of dice until the required support resources exist. And then we get people complaining about sunk cost fallacies because we have darts that we can't use because our entire army is short-sighted but darts are useless as they are so let's all give up on the dice we already spent...

Tactics, my current vote (BTW you ignored it in your analysis of proposals.) have a similar effect. They make drones we have and produce better without the need to change our production.

Also, from both tactics and bows I expect something somewhat useful effect even with 1,1,1 kind of rolls. No drone can be useful in case of bad luck.

Tactics would probably be useful with 1, 1, 1, on account of we currently have no tactics at all. Bows, on the other hand, completely useless, we already have ranged, even if it is just N.E. and building and deploying the things to short-sighted armies is a waste of resources and dice. Vespas? Probably not. They are somewhat high-performance. They need a certain amount of speed... Revs might do well though, I mean, doesn't take much to bash down a door...

I do actually like the tactics design, but it just isn't the best thing on the menu right now. We have important jobs that need to be filled and just having someone doing those jobs at all is not something that is easy to counter. Trying to have one unit do everything, on the other hand, is extremely easy to counter.

[Strongpoint]

I don't want a drone but if majority prefers a drone and there are interest in flying then...

Sprayer drone
Sprayer drone is based on hunter. Same body. Same acid gland for damage. Same senses. The only and main difference is that Fliers have no limbs at all and those are replaced with a system of wings (exact shape is up to queen's discretion). They have smooth bottom body allowing them to slide along flat surface to take-off or land, alternatively they can be propelled in the air  by recently developed bioligical springs in warriors pincers or thrown by workers who climb to elevated space. Their goal is deliver acid even further than spitters can as well as provide scouting


Why I think it is far better then Vespa?
1) It introduces only one new gene: Wings. It focuses effort on this. Even if design itself will be a complete failure we are likely to get a ton of experience in flight. Almost as much as doing: theoretical design:wings
2) It shares parts with hunters meaning improving of the one will cause improvement of the other
3) It uses acid gland as a weapon and we have a nice cost reduction for that.
4) It fills the artillery spot
5) They should be very resistant to melee damage. After all they stay in the air. Enemy only viable option to deal with those are arrows but even then this creature has some armor

Are there any interest in this? I can vote for this as a compromise with guys who want flight and who want more drones.



Ninja'd
Answer to RAM

It occupies the role of penetrating lines, focusing force, and dealing with exceptional forces

It fights in melee stage. We have adequate melee fighters. Role of melee fighters is filled. How it engages in melee is irrelevant.

I think that hunters proved that we can get more than that out of a single design. New legs, New carapace, new weapon... I used to think as you did, but I decided to try SCIENCE!! and turned out that we can do better.

Legs are the only true new thing in hunters. Carapace is a mix of workers and soldiers. Acid gland is a scaled down version of and existing thing. Wings alone are far more complex than changing shape of legs.

Bows, on the other hand, completely useless, we already have ranged, even if it is just N.E. and building and deploying the things to short-sighted armies is a waste of resources and dice.

*Facepalms* Bows will add to N.E. In no way bows can make spitters worse. Neither they can be useless because they will be add some ranged damage in any case. They may be not useful enough to justify an action, but it is a different story.
Vespas are less efficient melee fighters than one we have already and they will reduce effectiveness of other melee fighters because we will need to cut production of other melee fighters to make Vespas.

What, in total, have our designs thus far done for us in terms of actual performance that actually happened? Because a new unit with a bad die that was barely implemented seems to have been the cream of the crop...

Missed this important part initially. What our designs did? Let me think... digestive improvement  added more drones to the frontline, dark vision added skirmish phase causing deaths of hundreds of enemy soldiers. Effect are very visible. If you think that hunters had the biggest impact... then you are ignoring numbers and judge battles by how flashy their description are. 

[10ebbor10]

It occupies the role of penetrating lines, focusing force, and dealing with exceptional forces. It may be light for flight, but it is still a metre-long animal with the benefit of diving with all its force focused on a single point. It should be capable of reliable killing mages through their bronze armour by making massive holes through their bodies. And it uses elements that are actually sensible, like flying beetles and armoured-shaped-head beetles. It rather precisely deals with the immediate problem that we are having of their mages doing properly unpleasant things and being able to avoid getting into trouble over it and is good progress towards highly versatile flight and armoured heads.

Your creature is limited in range to the melee phase, because it's short range. When entering the melee phase, the wizards have already cast all the spells they're going to cast. Killing them at that point is entirely pointless, and will have no effect on the rest of the battle because the battle is over.

In addition, it's unlikely it'll can do even that. We do not have eyes with great fidelity, we do not have any tactics to identify and destroy high value targets.  Odds are that they'll pick random slaves to attack, not mages.

It can not penetrate lines, as for that it is way too fragile, and too small. As flying unit, it needs to be light, and hence will not be able to penetrate. Conservation of momentum is a thing. A heavy warhorse weights nearly a ton and has a large spear. It needs that to break the line. Your unit has neither the momentum nor the range, meaning it'll take out maybe one spearmen before plowing into the ground, and most likely will simply impale itself onto a spear.

So, in conclusion :

1) It does not deal with enemy mages
2) It is not capable of avoiding trouble, rather it flies into it, gets it head stuck into someone's gut, then dies horribly.
3) It is not good progress towards getting wings, giving that you give it very bad flight capabilities
4) Why do we want armored heads. Hitting things with your head is stupid.

[Detoxicated]

Id vote for the sprayer drone. We need wings and we need more unit types to have a proper army

[Strongpoint]

Id vote for the sprayer drone. We need wings and we need more unit types to have a proper army

Nothing stops you from adding your vote to the votebox. If the train will grow I may switch to it.


Wolfchild, Puppyguard, kopout
Can I interest you in voting for a Sprayer instead of Vespa? As far as I understand you largely vote for Vespa because you want flying units, right?

Shadowclaw Bombardier isn't going to win.

[10ebbor10]

Honestly, I don't like the Sprayer drone much.

A flying unit that can not take of on it's own seems rather limited.

[Strongpoint]

Honestly, I don't like the Sprayer drone much.

A flying unit that can not take of on it's own seems rather limited.

No legs is an attempt to save cost. Besides else it will be hunter with wings attached to it and that doesn't sound good. But I'll add smooth abandonment for some additional way to take off

I don't think this is a great design. It is a soft form of a "develop wings" design. I am just offering an alternative to guys, who want flight and new drones

[FallacyofUrist]

Queen Design:
"Anatress": (1) Shadowclaw
"Novico": (5) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, Puppyguard, strongpoint, Urist Mc Dwarf
"Forest Princess" N.S.C.: (2) RAM, Wolfchild
"Silvia": (0)
"Lamana": (0)
"Minerva". (1) kopout
ebbor's unnamed queen: (1) NUKE9.13

Designs:
Bombardier: (1) Shadowclaw
Revencher: (4) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, 10ebbor10, FallacyofUrist
Vespa: (4) RAM, Wolfchild, Puppyguard, kopout
Lamprey bug: (1) andrea,
No Design
Mace tail
Advanced digging
Farming
Darter Caste: (1) Blood_Librarian
Bows ()
Tactics : Penetration of the center (4) 10ebbor10, NUKE9.13, Urist Mc Dwarf, strongpoint

I really don't like the idea of the Vespa, so I'm making a three-way tie.

Glory to the Hive.

[Strongpoint]

Queen Design:
"Anatress": (1) Shadowclaw
"Novico": (5) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, Puppyguard, strongpoint, Urist Mc Dwarf
"Forest Princess" N.S.C.: (2) RAM, Wolfchild
"Silvia": (0)
"Lamana": (0)
"Minerva". (1) kopout
ebbor's unnamed queen: (1) NUKE9.13

Designs:
Bombardier: (1) Shadowclaw
Revencher: (5) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, 10ebbor10, FallacyofUrist, strongpoint
Vespa: (4) RAM, Wolfchild, Puppyguard, kopout
Lamprey bug: (1) andrea,
No Design
Mace tail
Advanced digging
Farming
Darter Caste: (1) Blood_Librarian
Bows ()
Tactics : Penetration of the center (4) 10ebbor10, NUKE9.13, Urist Mc Dwarf

Ties are evil! Glory to the chitinous elephants!
 

[Draignean]

Ah, well, didn't get back soon enough to really propose a good bio-artillery. This'll work as an intermediary.

Queen Design:
"Anatress": (1) Shadowclaw
"Novico": (5) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, Puppyguard, strongpoint, Urist Mc Dwarf
"Forest Princess" N.S.C.: (2) RAM, Wolfchild
"Silvia": (0)
"Lamana": (0)
"Minerva". (1) kopout
ebbor's unnamed queen: (1) NUKE9.13

Designs:
Bombardier: (1) Shadowclaw
Revencher: (6) Flazeo25, Crazyabe, 10ebbor10, FallacyofUrist, strongpoint, Draignean
Vespa: (4) RAM, Wolfchild, Puppyguard, kopout
Lamprey bug: (1) andrea,
No Design
Mace tail
Advanced digging
Farming
Darter Caste: (1) Blood_Librarian
Bows ()
Tactics : Penetration of the center (3) 10ebbor10, NUKE9.13, Urist Mc Dwarf