Bio-Technology

[thrawn2187]

are the zuul unable to research biome colonizers or do i just have horrible luck? i never get that one

[usermist2]

Silly dragon, sufficiently advanced technology IS magic...

[kdonovan]

are the zuul unable to research biome colonizers or do i just have horrible luck? i never get that one

I think it's 50% now for Zuul.

[Nall White]

So, the Loa eradicate all bio matter from planets. Will there be a Titan AE or Star Trek style genesis ship that regrows the biosphere?
Most importantly will there be:
A SolForce captain that engaged in cowboy diplomacy before the next generation of captains were born?
An epic battle at the science station where the tech is being researched?
A hot walkabout from unmatixcore zero-one?

Enquiring minds want to know.

[German.Dad]

has anybody ever tried the plague path under bio-technology for combat?
is it effectiv to use or are the "regular" weapons better for clearing out enemy planets?

thanks for any tips.

[Treliant]

I've been messing around with them a bit German.dad. My understanding is that they arn't really system cleaners so much as system chaos generators What is
really mean about them ( at least based on thier decription, not sure if they are completely hooked in yet) is the potential for the plagues to spread if you move fleets out of the plagued system. They basically force your opponent to sacrifice a few fleets or isolate the system that is infected or see the plague spread through out his empire.
Some of the higher tech ones have some nasty effects as well. The first 2 (plague/retro plague) only result in population damage over time. Beast Bomb kills population and drops the infrastructure of a planet down to 0 if it last long enough so goodbye production (devastating if you hit your enemies production systems). Assimilation plague basically starts a rebellion on the target planet, if the rebels win the planet joins your empire permanently (ya thats brutal!). Zombie plague kills everyone eventually and has no cure so if a world gets hit and doesn't manage to contain the zombies everyone has to glass it from orbit to make it safe for colonization.

I think they are going to be a really interesting tool in the hands of players. They are not as quick or damaging as using assualt shuttles or siege drivers but they definitly cannot be ignored. In multiplayer the fire and forget followed by many turns of chaos for your opponent is going to be fun (hooray for cloaked biowar ships MWHAHAHAHAHA)

PS: I didn't realize that bloodweaver actually has assimilation plague equipped on his armor so if a zuul gets lucky he can get a sulka fairly early with one of the most brutal plagues! Awesome

[German.Dad]

yeah, cloaked biowar ships was also what i thought about.
or cheap ships only to hit the planet with a plaque, like "fire and forget ships"...

will a plague eventually kill all population if it has enough turns without a cure? or is it a limited effect for a few turns?

thanks for your feedback so far

[German.Dad]

ok, i played around a bit now too with bio weapons.

i managed to build a design of bio-war cruisers and attacked an enemy colony with them.
two strange things happend:

1. the launch sequence of the bio-missiles took some time but then they didn't launch but only "explode"?
is that a visual problem or can they realy explode at launch? (no enemy PD or Drones where near, i protected my Bio-Ships with 2 PD cruisers)

2. if i get a successful bio-attack, how do i know it? is there a marker that a system has been infected somewhere?

thanks
German.Dad

[whiterebbit]

I would like a plague similar to a colony trap. You go and survey a uninhabited planet close to an enemies boarder (might be a slight problem if they have already surveyed it but I'm sure we can work around that). What I want is to engineer a weapon that once fired at a planet will terraform it to a certain CH level. There would be different versions for each race and the CH level would be randomised within a certain limit so it's not obvious that this world has been infected.

So you're left with this reasonably nice looking world closed to one of your neighbouring races, which is infected. Now when someone comes along to colonize the world, I'd like the plague to be time delay say 6 turns (can again be randomized within certain limits). So when the coloniser goes back to there base system they will be a carrier and can ineffect the base system. Now if the base system has trade going on then the freighters can spread the plague and so on.

I'll left the community come up with what the plague does. But boils sound very nasty how about those. So everyones off work sick and you get decreased planet IO and trade income. I just want a colony trap plague.

[moonsilver]

Assuming plauges spread. They should be effective against a planet with lots of freighters. Since this is an assumption, i don't claim this to be true. But theoretically the freighters would carry the plague to the all the planets they export too.

[German.Dad]

can anybody give me a hint to my post above?
how to be sure the plague did hit the planet?

[Treliant]

currently the only way I've been able to tell if the plague hit is to save the game and reload as the AI player and check his event messages. As of right now I don't think there is any message or information for the attacker letting him know the results. I'm sure Kerb will get around to fixing this though.

note: you can assume that if a missle hits the planet than you have infected it. I belive each missle hit infects a given percentage so 1 misle still causes an infection.

[Unkn0wnx]

I am still using SOTS Prime logic. In SOTS Prime I like to abuse Bio weapons, they are wonderful until your enemies get good PD or cure. So I researched Xombie plaque and launched it on Liir AI; I thought they would be at least as good as Assimilation plaque from Prime. They don't seem to be affected. I saved the game and log in as AI and see they were losing like 20,000 population a turn. And it dies down after four five turns. They didn't seem to get morale hits either (or maybe psionic effect negated that). A size one planet has what? 100,000,000? That was before EOF, I hope they are much stronger now. If they are still doing 20,000 its not worth the effort.

[Mecron]

why are you posting information from a bunch of updates ago?

[Unkn0wnx]

Ah they must been upgraded! Mecron you da best!