From a twitter feed with a discussion with a pro-sci-fi/fantasy author and artist and good friend and avid player of C2C, asked about the honest legitimacy of gen-tech dinos and beyond in an arena of bots, cyborgs, clones and mechs:
That's tricky. I don't recall the actual math but there's a rule of thumb that as the distance from origin squares the cost of a military unit cubes, due to the support required. An advantage of cavalry units v. armored (back when) was that cav could feed their animals locally v. having to bring fuel, parts, etc., & their supply reqs were few enough that bio (mules etc) could do the same for their support. If you have infrastructure for mechanized units, though (IE, interstates as 1 example, to increase supplychain efficiency) it can be less expensive, but still, not cheap.
Also, there's the matter of granularity, not just mobility, which is why infantry is irreplacable. Cav can simultaneously be bio/mobile, infantry, & local-resourced on support. So the consideration, I reckon, is whether advanced-bio/gengineered units are cheaper in support v. their equivalent (most likely mechanized infantry).
Dinosaurs with miniguns & bear cavalry are still cool as hell, though.
All units have an element of energy density v. results. We've used ICE/gasoline for this long b/c inexpensive weight-per-joule from gas just hasn't been matched 'til recently (in acceptable ways: we could all have nuke-powered cars if the tech+cost+risk was worth it). So, if we assume that the t+c+r can be sorted out during the gengineering then battlefield bios are a possible thing, esp. if the units can "recharge" (feed) locally v. having to ship their fuel/feed/care needs in the supply chain.
HOWEVER (and there's always a however), the more complex a machine, the easier it is to break with a hammer. Nuke-throwing Skynet could be destroyed by one human w/a fire axe in the right place & time. Same w/biological units: your T-Rexes W/Miniguns For Hands can be taken out with a mix of household cleaners, just like main battle tanks can be immobilized by plain old barbed wire tangling the treads.
So, my call is, the
advantage of a bio unit would be in combined-arms doctrine. Utahraptors w/light armor + gengineered chem resistance would mix well w/ armor, battlemechs, mechanized infantry & airpower, for example, since they'd fill a diversity gap. Slow-burn, common-food-source herbivorous dinos towing trailers could be cheaper than truck convoys, maybe. Since we're talking C2C/Civ4 here, it'll come down to the math, since the psychological aspects of "HOLY CRAP A THOUSAND VELOCIRAPTORS" doesn't figure in AFAIK. 1k of Vraptors are just meat to an A-10 or a battlemech; it's only on a personal level that terror is a factor.
Anyway. As
@Owen_Stephens puts it, "
Err on the side of cool."
I say bring'm on. After all, like a hammer can beat high-tech, biologicals may in particular cases, be the exact antidote for a seemingly-overwhelming hi-tech target. Even now, mega-$ laser weapon systems can be defeated by... clouds. So, a mega-tech mech might be defenseless against gengineered bio-units clogging their heat sinks, sensors & internals. Their sweet spot might be in asymmetric warfare, city garrisons, even espionage. Hi-tech might compliment the bios.
Just as importantly, a gengineered single bio can be the equivalent of a whole regular unit (like the gryphons in our books), so their support costs could ultimately be lower. That's where I'd put my money on them in C2C/Civ4. Then again, if you've made it that far in the game, money isn't likely even a concern for you. Maybe they could act as a force-multiplier, proportionately adding to the power of other units, but not wholly independent. Say, a bio unit + a MechInf would increase the power of the MechInf, but if the MechInf is destroyed, the bio unit vanishes.
Owen_Stephens said: In my Diesel Pulp 1947 hobby setting, the dinosaur-based German Wüstedrachen were being built as a way to have self-sustaining, self-replicating war forces for an eventual invasion of North America, built on being able to x20 the number of your toothy war-mounts every year.
The bolded bits are the exact points I'm trying to make. Scales can be bioengineered to be comprised of nearly any material, as the body can deposit whatever the genes tell it too. Might make for an interesting diet. The main thing is that you only need to tweak or adapt the existing biological code to make improvements here and there. Some tech can be included as well but you don't want them to be completely reliant on it or able to be taken control of through it because that's already the key weakness of cyborgs and robotics and even mechs and power armors can be shut down by an effective hack or emp pulse, though I think mechs would eventually be made more resistant to that.
Some aspects of the civ combat system don't perfectly equate this whole picture out and I haven't yet FULLY balanced things to look at all unit interactions but my point here is that I see where there would be a role for such creatures to play, particularly when mounted, and in the case of raptors, intelligent enough to be trained to apply a strong % of human thought complexity to their behaviors.
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