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[Iituem]

Iituem
Hm, question to stop walls of text. Lets say we do a revision that will reduce worker's effectiveness as worker. Lets say... replace their four finger graspers with a chitin balls for bashing. Will we get a penalty to economy?

Mm... no, you'd get a second caste based off the worker, because the Queen wouldn't allow such a negative change to the base worker design.  You'd get the "wrecking ball worker" design and have to assign new budget for it.  Changes that don't impede the base worker design's ability to function as a multi-tool may vary; the main cost for big changes to the worker design would be making them cost more, reducing the total number of workers on the field full stop.

Iltuem
How many workers will we need to spend manpower to replace if they're only doing farming and not doing any fighting at all?

In their current design?  Beneath the abstraction layer, as it were.  Workers on the field and workers in the field, so to speak, are interchangeable.  There are 'enough to feed the hive' without screwing with the behind-the-scenes economy.  Right now I'd say the benefits to increased agricultural production from leaving workers purely on hunting duty are outweighed by the value of quickly drafting them when needed to fill the lines.

[RAM]

Hrmmm, perhaps maths has the answers...
If you have 10 workers and a battle and a farm.

The farm requires 2 workers at a time, the battle absorbs the overflow.
If the battle is especially bad then all the workers can fight, but that means less farming... It would probably come out somewhere, maybe a manpower cost if there are heavy losses? Meh, let's call it half effectiveness...
Let's say that you can triple the battle effectiveness by doubling the food use and half the food use by removing it completely.

10-(2/2)=9 battle power from workers. Same equation applies to dedicated workers for different reasons...
(5-(2/2))*3=12 from combat workers? I should probably try to make an equation for determining the ratio of effectiveness to consumption increase that breaks even based on variable civilian duty and civilian detriment values... Oh right! Imma too lazy!
(5-(2/(2*2)))*3=13.5 if we put everything together, I think...

And this is all further complicated by the fact that the amount of farms we can have is based upon our food availability xcombined with our food usage being bsed on our poulation, unless it isn't...

[Iituem]

For the sake of simplicity I'll say this; the Queen will always reserve sufficient workers or equivalent drones to maintain the maximum agricultural output that available land and technology permit.  You don't need to worry about starving because you send too many workers off to war, and keeping workers behind won't help because they're already used to full capacity.  If you want to improve food output, you need to devise new ways to output food.  The queen does domestic resource management just fine on her own.

[Devastator]

So a 0% build rate will work.

[RAM]

Note to self: try to remember to propose shielded wings for hunters to hover out of encirclments and fly over spear-walls.
 Ask if anyone can think of a flying insect that can't hover.
 Propose a tunnelling insect that eats wood to produce glistening clear hard-setting glue that can keep tunnels stable and produce improvised barriers. Suggest that it can be used to build dwarf fortresses without the dwarves. Suggest that emitic produce is indistinguishable from mushroom-derived alcoholic beverages.

[andrea]

A soldier only army murders our TC i believe.

[RAM]

A soldier only army murders our TC i believe.

Oh, right, that...

To be fair, if we don't lose any units, then eventually the lack of losses will accumulate decent amounts of T.C.. The tradeoff is T.C. units to win battles or combat units to gain favourable kill ratios...

[10ebbor10]

Food cap is a problem there. We can't support that many soldiers

[andrea]

In the end, we need a cheap unit to hold territory.

Also, i am worried 40% will not cut it. Ebbor's math shows that we will have barely more units than we had last turn.

[RAM]

In the end, we need a cheap unit to hold territory.

Giant spiders? Combine web and hunting and trapdoor... Big rear limbs for jumping and digging backwards. venomous armour-piercing fangs and sharp scything pedipalps to slice and grab. Fields of webbing for sensory coverage, terrain denial, and decoy webs. They could sprint around at night, throw up new webs, then hide in a hole and hold onto webs for signs of movement before leaping out and decapitate someone with scissoring scythes, end another with an injection of venom, then drag a third into their lair and leave them screaming as they bleed to death...
May not be ideal in army manoeuvres though, not without being creative, like having them stick to the underside of soldiers to strike at anyone who tries to surround them...

Or we could make nurse bugs, which fly around the place with a pouch filled with harvested eggs, ready to hold the eggs above the food cap and then lay and nurse them into replacement troops before T.C. is counted... They could also act as paratroops by flying over impassable or hostile terrain to raise clutches behind enemy lines...

Or just shrink our workers to make them more efficient without losing T.C....

[Strongpoint]

Here is what I want to design next turn barring emergencies

Shield wall tactic
Blindly charging into enemy spears resulted in death of hundreds and hundreds of worker drones. Something needs to be changed. Hive starts arming its workers with shields. Some of worker drones are now equipped with two wooden shields held in each of their graspers allowing them to block spear strikes and enemy arrows. Workers form box-like formations with shield users going in front lines with their shields protecting each other and rows of unarmed workers in back lines.

In some way our workers are like dwarves on the battlefield. Strong, small, slow, armored. Dwarves compensate their lack of reach with shields to go closer for striking with their axes. We can do the same, but we have no need for axes because workers have barbs and middle legs.

In addition to getting shields(and use for timber) we are advancing battlefield tactics and can build on this by new designs or revisions. We are hive mind with telepathic link and yet we don't cooperate on battlefield and go CHAAAAARGGE and this seems wrong.