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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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Simon_Jester said:
That's more of a "Kane masterstroke" scale of move than anything a lone warlord could accomplish. And if we're preparing against it we should also be thinking about the prospect of this coming at the same time as a more general full-court push by all of Nod.
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This would be big even for a Kane Masterstroke. It would require a seriously big honking laser, in the right place, that is precise enough to actually hit.
Basically, lets assume that the target area is a square kilometer at 36,000 kilometers. That is not easy. That is very, very not easy. Just to hit, you have to be able to point the emitter within a fraction of a degree.
 
Ithillid said:
This would be big even for a Kane Masterstroke. It would require a seriously big honking laser, in the right place, that is precise enough to actually hit.
Basically, lets assume that the target area is a square kilometer at 36,000 kilometers. That is not easy. That is very, very not easy. Just to hit, you have to be able to point the emitter within a fraction of a degree.
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Ehhh, yes. On the other hand, to aim a telescope you need to be able to do the same thing, often to a greater degree of precision because in relative terms the target is even smaller (that is to say, much larger but much much much more distant).

...

There are, in fact, a lot of striking similarities between aiming a laser cannon and aiming a telescope.

The problem is taking a sufficiently large laser and either:

1) Making it a "trainable" weapon, that is to say something that can be swiveled around like a gun in a turret, or

2) Designing it to have a main beamline that actually produces the laser, and optics (e.g. mirrors) to direct that beam to an "optical head" that is much smaller than the overall 'laser gun' but itself trainable... and which is a perfect enough transmitter/reflector of the laser light that it doesn't absorb enough of the energies of the gigantic beam to get wrecked by the small fraction that isn't transmitted or reflected.

It's certainly a tough engineering problem to make an anti-space laser weapon capable of targeting things in or near geosynchronous orbit. On the other hand, it's easier to make them capable of hitting things in low orbit... and we have those to think of, too.

But yeah, we're definitely talking about things that by Nod standards would be a megaproject, something unveiled to much cackling and ranting. "WITH THE AID... OF MY SECRET WEAPON!"
 
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Yeah I don't think that orbital strikes are a real pressing concern at the moment, but more importantly than my gut feeling Space Force agrees. Their confidence is at decent, and yes I know there are levels higher than "decent" but given how utterly fucked and behind the planetside branches are compared to our ambitions at the moment even just 1 military die per turn going into ASAT is taking bandwidth away from something else that needs the investment more. Maybe in 4-6 turns we can circle back and evaluate trying to do ASAT 3 by the end of the Plan but I disagree that it's worth investing in right now, even at a low rate, because that's a die that could go into getting the Talons off "literally zero" confidence or bulking up the army/navy/air force to take more territory and population.

If Space Force's confidence level goes down and they start yelling about how they're worried the orbitals are vulnerable then we can bump ASAT up the priority order obviously, but given the information we have right now I don't think we should divert the resources to fight a hypothetical (that's also falling right into the trap of fighting the last war not the next one) instead of the real immediate problems that are getting people killed right now.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Nod warlords going for our orbitals as such seems less than fully likely, because the necessary installations (e.g. missile launch silos or giant fuckoff surface-to-space lasers) are going to be big and obtrusive. Nod's core membership, the elites who get Cool Shit like Avatars and Vertigo bombers and who have lots of Black Hand power armor, they're the ones I'd worry about that form. And yes, that's a good reason to expand ASAT... but on the other hand, the existing defense system is actually relatively well adapted to that kind of sporadic threat. The main weakness of ASAT as it now exists isn't that it fails to defend things, it's that it's vulnerable to an assault on its command centers. We've moved part of the command and control system into space, so that's good; ASAT Phase 3 is us doing more of that. But to really knock out our ASAT system, or to damage major targets through it, even now would require some combination of a massive barrage with lots and lots of surface to space weaponry, OR a concerted attack that took out both the command node in Greenland and the backup node in space.
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I don't think they'd masterstroke the whole thing like they did to launch The 3rd Tiberium War. What I'm imagining is a Warlord deciding to throw up some missiles/whatever they have to hit infrastructure while doing some sabotage/guerilla attacks in the lead up to the attack. Presumably, in this scenario, we'd roll dice with a large advantage and depending on the rolls take damage all the way from "lose some ASAT Cannons" to "structural damage to the [Random] Station." I'm advocating a light expenditure to bring the our ASAT capability up over time to make sure that, in such an event, the dice rolls favor us as heavily as possible. We may in fact have no choice going forward, if the politicians are on the Philly. They might just mandate updating defenses.

Either way, with a slow trickle dice over several quarters, I think its worth investing in given how large a part of our plan Space is going forward.

Simon_Jester said:
4) Nod may attempt to revisit their old habits of subterranean tunneling as a substitute for easily intercepted surface traffic, if they haven't already. The spread of underground tiberium makes that problematic, but Nod may have ways to deal with that.
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What can we develop to counter this? Sonic Tech seems a good way to fighting underground enemies, or at least detecting them. Never really have subterranians problems a thought. Maybe we'll see some stuff from Ithillid now its been brought up.
 
Absoloot said:
I don't think they'd masterstroke the whole thing like they did to launch The 3rd Tiberium War. What I'm imagining is a Warlord deciding to throw up some missiles/whatever they have to hit infrastructure while doing some sabotage/guerilla attacks in the lead up to the attack. Presumably, in this scenario, we'd roll dice with a large advantage and depending on the rolls take damage all the way from "lose some ASAT Cannons" to "structural damage to the [Random] Station." I'm advocating a light expenditure to bring the our ASAT capability up over time to make sure that, in such an event, the dice rolls favor us as heavily as possible. We may in fact have no choice going forward, if the politicians are on the Philly. They might just mandate updating defenses.
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A random warlord chucking a handful of missiles is exactly what the network is designed to counter just in day-to-day operation, it probably handles that kind of thing multiple times per year without needing to roll anything. ASAT 3 is specifically a second orbital control station to make it totally independent of the Greenland control center which I don't see being relevant to the standard low-intensity stuff that warlords can pull off without Kane coming out to play. It's only useful against a Kane-level threat, and Kane shouldn't be coming out to play anytime soon.
 
What I would worry about for non-Kane masterstrokes with respect to ASAT is either a huge saturation strike on our network, or some bullshit like stealth missiles.
 
[X] Plan R&D is Expensive

I'm in.
Let's see if we can complete Remote Weapon Systems this time. Last time we rolled a 1 on it and it ended up with the system being way too sensitive and shooting everything.
 
Shard of Victory said:
Also the things that can be used only once, because afterwards they will be absolutly hammered by ion cannons and airstrikes.
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I mean, giant Nod surface-to-space laser installations are the kind of thing GDI prefers to take a "not even once" stance on, I'm quite sure; presumably Nod would be shamelessly abusing their superiority in the fields of "cloak the entire fucking base" and "break out all that excavation equipment we used back in Tib War II" to build the thing in the first place without GDI's knowledge.

Crazycryodude said:
If Space Force's confidence level goes down and they start yelling about how they're worried the orbitals are vulnerable then we can bump ASAT up the priority order obviously, but given the information we have right now I don't think we should divert the resources to fight a hypothetical (that's also falling right into the trap of fighting the last war not the next one) instead of the real immediate problems that are getting people killed right now.
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I agree with your basic analysis.

Though to be fair in regards to "fighting the last war, not the next one," we are rapidly approaching a point where our space-based presence is as great or greater than it was before Tib War III. The overall nature of our space defenses was proved miserably inadequate in Tib War III, both in that the defenses were vulnerable to being shut down by a Nod masterstroke and in that the defenses were inadequate to repel even the most paltry alien invasion we are likely to ever see.

In short, we had invested a modest amount into space assets, and the means we had to defend those assets proved miserably inadequate.

Now, we plan to invest in space assets to a far greater level than before- orders of magnitude greater, even. It behooves us to consider that while the next war will not play out precisely like the last, it is vanishingly unlikely that Nod will simply ignore our space assets. Kane would be a fool to do so, if those assets prove to be enough of a threat, or a strong enough redoubt from which GDI can strike freely at the planetary surface.

Or, as others have observed at other times, if Kane is attempting to control GDI's actions and narrow our options so that we are forced to donate resources to a tiberium control project of his own design and that furthers his own ends. In that last case, he will not want us to have the option of escaping into space if he can possibly help it.
 
The orbital military project I'd really like to get is the OSRCT. An entire regiment that can deploy anywhere on the planet at speed would be fantastic. But if anything would prompt NOD to masterstroke our orbitals, it'd be the OSRCT. So to say doing the OSRCT before ASAT 3 is "risky" is an putting it lightly. And that unfortunately doubles how expensive the whole endeavor would be.
 
I saw some proposals for 1 dice a turn on AST starting next turn since we have the fusion dice for it and I feel like that makes sense that we can chip away at it each turn while still pumping a lot of dice into other mil dev.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I mean, giant Nod surface-to-space laser installations are the kind of thing GDI prefers to take a "not even once" stance on, I'm quite sure; presumably Nod would be shamelessly abusing their superiority in the fields of "cloak the entire fucking base" and "break out all that excavation equipment we used back in Tib War II" to build the thing in the first place without GDI's knowledge.
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Thing is, such instalations have to be stationary, and while it is possible to buiild one in secrecy, it is impossible to use it in secrecy. Once revealed, it won't make a second shot.
 
Ehh... I think they're probably too distributed to take out, but NOD might also try attacking our orbital lift spacecraft. Our stations aren't yet self-sufficient; we'd need both Enterprise and Shala up to Phase 3 before they aren't dependent on shipments from the surface to work. But depending on how many launch and fusion manufacturing sites we have that might take MASTERSTROKE levels, and after we evacuate the stations they'd still be up there for when we return again.
 
Void Stalker said:
I saw some proposals for 1 dice a turn on AST starting next turn since we have the fusion dice for it and I feel like that makes sense that we can chip away at it each turn while still pumping a lot of dice into other mil dev.
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If we're gonna do that, we should take the Resources and dice we commit to it out of the customary 3/turn MARV dice. Slow-walk the completion of the last two MARV fleets at 1 die/turn to avoid wastage and make sure the bulk of the military is getting what they need while also giving the Steel Talons some love.
 
Crazycryodude said:
It's only useful against a Kane-level threat, and Kane shouldn't be coming out to play anytime soon.
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Yeah, fundmentally I don't agree. I don't think Greenland is completely incapable of being attacked in concert with a missile strike. I don't think they'd have the resources to succeed in taking down ASAT, but I certainly think they could do it harm, and potentially get some shots in. There's a spread of results between "I win" and "Kane Masterstrokes everything in one shot" IMO. It's not even that hard to complete, progress wise.

I'm not saying it's an emergency or we should shock it. Slowly update it though with our extra fusion dice? Yeah.
 
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Absoloot said:
Yeah, fundmentally I don't agree. I don't think Greenland is completely incapable of being attacked in concert with a missile strike. I don't think they'd have the resources to succeed in taking down ASAT, but I certainly think they could do it harm, and potentially get some shots in. There's a spread of results between "I win" and "Kane Masterokes everything in one shot" IMO. It's not even that hard to complete, progress wise.

I'm not saying it's an emergency or we should shock it. Slowly update it though with our extra fusion dice? Yeah.
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How are militants, scorpions, attack bikes, and raider buggies going to take a fortified arctic island in the middle of the Atlantic?

Nod does not get a free hand to choose their battles. They nearly lost their air convoy to assault the Rocky Mountain installation when Kane dropped the MoK and the Black Hand in addition to conventional warlords to achieve it. That involved AtA Venoms that use cutting edge tiberium core missiles and was when we had a deficit of Apollo air superiority fighters. And to be frank? There's probably going to be nearly as many defenses at the Greenland ASAT platform as there were at the Tacitus' facility. A Blue zone with no borders to Nod presence, over open air space, assaulting a fixed hardpoint GDI knows is a primary target? Screw Avatars, Stealth Tanks, and AtA Venoms- they'd need Redeemers involved to have a decent shot at cracking the base.
 
Karugus said:
How are militants, scorpions, attack bikes, and raider buggies going to take a fortified arctic island in the middle of the Atlantic?
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Are you being serious? I'm really not sure.

NOD aren't idiots. They aren't incompetent. They aren't one trick ponies. They also aren't magical McGuffins that we can't beat.

That being said, I don't see it as at all a stretch that, when NOD develops and decides to deploy a brand new Naval asset made for taking out our currently deployed assets, that their first move would be an attempted alpha strike on Greenland. Maybe we deploy cruisers fast enough that doesn't manifest. So then NOD develops a new Stealth Bomber to give a go.

There's a dozen scebarios I can imagine we're NOD could TRY to fuck with our ASAT.

I don't think they'll succeed, unless they bring together a force like what they hit the Tacitus with (in other words Kane is back), but imagining that it's completely safe because we put the facilities on an artic island is silly. NOD are really competent and people shouldn't underestimate them.

Also, I'd appreciate not being treated like I'm an idiot. Thanks.
 
Absoloot said:
Are you being serious? I'm really not sure.

NOD aren't idiots. They aren't incompetent. They aren't one trick ponies. They also aren't magical McGuffins that we can't beat.

That being said, I don't see it as at all a stretch that, when NOD develops and decides to deploy a brand new Naval asset made for taking out our currently deployed assets, that their first move would be an attempted alpha strike on Greenland. Maybe we deploy cruisers fast enough that doesn't manifest. So then NOD develops a new Stealth Bomber to give a go.

There's a dozen scebarios I can imagine we're NOD could TRY to fuck with our ASAT.

I don't think they'll succeed, unless they bring together a force like what they hit the Tacitus with (in other words Kane is back), but imagining that it's completely safe because we put the facilities on an artic island is silly. NOD are really competent and people shouldn't underestimate them.

Also, I'd appreciate not being treated like I'm an idiot. Thanks.
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That's not a warlord by that point. It bears emphasising that the vast majority of Nod do not have access to cutting edge heavy industry or R&D. Any warlord with a power base to build and develop a brand new naval vessel- a blue ocean one at that has the resources and clout to be known to GDI. Any warlord is going to be immensely wary of pursuing any of that sort of research and development because a shipyard is incredibly hard to hide and liable to be glassed from orbit. Wasting resources and manpower while weakening their position in front of the other warlords.

There's no reason to go after the ASAT unless it's the opening shot in a larger volley, and even if a warlord did get the resources to both launch an attack on fortify Greenland with never before seen Nod assets, and exploit the slight opening it gives in the ASAT network to launch a saturated nuclear strike (because even if Greenland falls, the network is degraded not defunct)- where are they going to get the resources to launch a global offensive against GDI in the aftermath with the limited window they have till GDI starts blasting with Ion cannons from orbit? Our position is far stronger than the ASAT in TW3 was, and that required Kane coordinating the entirety of the Brotherhood for a masterstroke while GDI thought Kane was dead and gone.

The only possible circumstances where an attack on Greenland by Nod makes sense if an ambitious Warlord wants to claim legitimacy as the successor to Kane by firing the first shot in a renewed war and dragging the rest of their warlords along with them, or if Kane wants it done. Anything less is a hail mary asking to get themselves killed with dubious payoff, and GDI would catch wind of any warlord that successful.

TLDR: There's no world where Nod is launching naval capital ships to assault Greenland without a super warlord like Marcion or Kane himself. The latter is immatieral to this argument and no one like Marcion avoids showing up on GDI's radar. As for your stealth bomber, where is this hypothetical Nod warlord getting the R&D and cutting edge aviation industry to design an improvement to the Vertigo? Stealth and aeronautics/aviation are both pretty high end techs, and a Vertigo assault would get laughed off by fixed defenses and Apollos.
 
When it comes to the Greenland base, and the ASAT system generally, right now a warlord could in theory send an all in death or glory ride at the Greenland base. It would be a death or glory operation, but is potentially successful. The orbital station is harder. Something like a laser strike, advanced penetration aid assisted missile barrages, Sprint Kessler Devices, or potentially xenotech based strikes are all possible, but not something that any of the warlords can manage at this time on top of the needs of the Greenland operation.
Someone like Kane, Marcion, Gideon, or similar could, theoretically pull it off. However, it is not a sure thing, and the system as a whole is much less vulnerable than it was in 2047. However it is still not invulnerable, and with sufficient effort, or the right tactics, it can be defeated. Even a second or third station would not entirely preempt this, however each does make the entire system a much larger pain to deal with from the perspective of even a fully prepared Brotherhood of NOD.
 
Makes sense ASAT isn't the perfect defense for us(there's no such thing as a perfect defense) but with enough redundancy we could frankly make it cost more then it's worth for NOD to attack.
 
At the moment ASAT probably does cost more than it's worth for Nod to attack it- from what Ithillid said, taking it out would be an extreme maximum-effort operation requiring a vast expenditure of their resources.

And even given that we're putting our top political leadership up there again, we're surely going to be taking more precautions against a decapitation attack, making the reward of such an operation less valuable.

But as the collective value of the things we put in orbit increases, the defensive strength required to deter attack (or better yet, to not deter attack, but successfully block the attack, causing one of Nod's top leadership figures to waste vast resources) increases considerably.
 
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