- Pronouns
- He/It/Argh!
Well I'm expecting it to run into a similar issue to the Glacier Mining.
We'll see which way this cycle unbalances.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
We'll see which way this cycle unbalances.
- Location
- The Underdark
Eventually it will. There is a curve. You are very firmly on one side of it. And it is not the side where you are throwing ever increasing resources at the same gains.
Decided to go with Ablat Plating Deployment instead of RWS as I think that 4 dice on Johannesburg Myomer Macrospinner has better odds of getting capital goods and the discount on Steel Talon Deployments then 2 dice on chemical and 2 on macrospinner and that is worth spending 10R more. 3 dice on Enterprise as I expect having an orbital refinery to deliver the materials collected by cleanup to will make things easier.
[X] Plan Myomer Titan next turn
Infrastructure (5 dice)
-[X] Tidal Power Plants (Phase 2), 4 dice (40 Resources)
-[X] Yellow Zone Arcologies (Phase 1), 1 die (15 Resources)
Heavy Industry (5 dice)
-[X] Fusion Peaker Plants, 1 die (20 Resources)
-[X] Heavy Rolling Stock Plants, 1 dice (10 Resources)
-[X] Kure Machine Works 3 dice (45 Resources)
Light and Chemical Industry (4 dice)
-[X] Johannesburg Myomer Macrospinner, 4 dice (80 Resources)
Agriculture (3 dice)
-[X] State Operated Breweries, 1 die (10 Resources)
-[X] Perennial Aquaponics Bays, 2 dice (20 Resources)
Tiberium (5 dice)
-[X] Tiberium Prospecting Expeditions, 4 dice (20 Resources)
-[X] Hewlett-Gardener Method Development 1 die (30 Resources)
Orbital (3 dice )
-[X] GDSS Enterprise (Phase 3), 3 dice (3 Fusion) (60 Resources)
Services (4 dice)
-[X] Game Development Studios, 4 dice (20 Resources)
Military (5 dice +6 Free)
-[X] Reclamator Hub (RZ-7 North), 1 die (20 Resources)
-[X] Reclamator Fleet YZ-5a (Super MARVs), 1 dice (20 Resources)
-[X] Zone Suit Factories 0/60 1 die 15R 71%
-[X] Stealth Disruptor System Development 0/40 1 die 25R 91%
-[X] Governor Class Cruiser Shipyards
--[X] Yokohama (Progress 0/200: 20 resources per die) (- Capital Goods, -- Energy, - Labor) 3 dice (60 Resources)
-[X] Ablat Plating Deployment (Phase 2), 3 dice (30 Resources) 0/240
-[X] Security Review, 1 die
Bureaucracy (3 dice)
-[X] Security Review (Military), 2 dice
-[X] Search For A Successor
Resources Available: 540
Resources Used: 540
[X] Plan Myomer Titan next turn
Infrastructure (5 dice)
-[X] Tidal Power Plants (Phase 2), 4 dice (40 Resources)
-[X] Yellow Zone Arcologies (Phase 1), 1 die (15 Resources)
Heavy Industry (5 dice)
-[X] Fusion Peaker Plants, 1 die (20 Resources)
-[X] Heavy Rolling Stock Plants, 1 dice (10 Resources)
-[X] Kure Machine Works 3 dice (45 Resources)
Light and Chemical Industry (4 dice)
-[X] Johannesburg Myomer Macrospinner, 4 dice (80 Resources)
Agriculture (3 dice)
-[X] State Operated Breweries, 1 die (10 Resources)
-[X] Perennial Aquaponics Bays, 2 dice (20 Resources)
Tiberium (5 dice)
-[X] Tiberium Prospecting Expeditions, 4 dice (20 Resources)
-[X] Hewlett-Gardener Method Development 1 die (30 Resources)
Orbital (3 dice )
-[X] GDSS Enterprise (Phase 3), 3 dice (3 Fusion) (60 Resources)
Services (4 dice)
-[X] Game Development Studios, 4 dice (20 Resources)
Military (5 dice +6 Free)
-[X] Reclamator Hub (RZ-7 North), 1 die (20 Resources)
-[X] Reclamator Fleet YZ-5a (Super MARVs), 1 dice (20 Resources)
-[X] Zone Suit Factories 0/60 1 die 15R 71%
-[X] Stealth Disruptor System Development 0/40 1 die 25R 91%
-[X] Governor Class Cruiser Shipyards
--[X] Yokohama (Progress 0/200: 20 resources per die) (- Capital Goods, -- Energy, - Labor) 3 dice (60 Resources)
-[X] Ablat Plating Deployment (Phase 2), 3 dice (30 Resources) 0/240
-[X] Security Review, 1 die
Bureaucracy (3 dice)
-[X] Security Review (Military), 2 dice
-[X] Search For A Successor
Resources Available: 540
Resources Used: 540
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, the problem probably isn't gonna be Nod shooting at us, at least. We hope.
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
[X] Plan Capitally Urgent, Funds for Steel Talons, Get Your First Shots, Cleanup on Aisle LEO
My only, only concern with this plan is that it involves ignoring the Steel Talon walker project we previously greenlit... again. But at least we're giving them something (and I'm sure they'd appreciate the chance to stick a gatling laser on the side of their new Titans because... I mean, c'mon, it's a gatling laser).
My only, only concern with this plan is that it involves ignoring the Steel Talon walker project we previously greenlit... again. But at least we're giving them something (and I'm sure they'd appreciate the chance to stick a gatling laser on the side of their new Titans because... I mean, c'mon, it's a gatling laser).
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Antipersonnel lasers are specifically something they want and are explicitly listed as something they were thinking of putting on the Titan Mk. III.
Furthermore, we're never going to be able to promise the Steel Talons a deployment project every other turn given the need to make sure the production lines get retooled rapidly, not without fucking over everyone else. We can reasonably promise the Talons an average 1 or 1.5 dice/turn. Two is pushing it, because we struggle hard to do it without:
1) Shorting the Ground and Air Forces by giving them less than 3-4 dice/turn combined
2) Shorting the Navy by giving them less than 2-3 dice/turn to get all those Governor shipyards spooled up.
3) Shorting the MARV projects by not spending dice on MARVs.
If we could stop building MARVs we'd have more wiggle room, but it's gonna be at least a few more turns (and probably require the resumption of normal Tib mitigation projects) before anyone's willing to sign off on that.
At a bare minimum, we can reasonably offer the Talons the excuse: "We're currently getting the myomer plant spun up to produce at a level that lets you actually build your Titans with them. That's gonna take a few months. We'll try to squeeze in the deployment then."
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm pretty sure we're not getting more Military dice until we do the war factory refits, probably some time in mid-to-late 2057, so about 6-7 turns from now. We're probably not getting more Free dice until we do Philadelphia Phase 4, and that's a LONG way out.
The reality is, we can theoretically put 11 dice on the military (and we really shouldn't do that every turn, it slows down a lot of other stuff we need done, including stuff that is itself gating military projects).
A reasonable rough draft breakdown for that might look like...
1 wiggle die
2 MARV
4 Ground+Air Force
3 Navy
1 Talons
The wiggle die can float, but it's not always going to float to any one group, so meh.
And we can shift that to two dice per turn for the Talons consistently, without always giving them the wiggle die... but only if we either find more dice (not soon), or are willing to really cut into one of the other categories.
MARV spending is really straining things here, and I know why we're doing it but it's not a small expenditure and the opportunity costs are significant.
- Location
- Fort Worth, TX
[X] Plan Myomer Titan next turn
I keep telling people, we don't actually have a hole that we need maximum effort to lift us out of the 'hole'. We are not responsible for the military's lack of confidence, they were in rough shape from the start. 5 dice per turn will be more than enough to do some serious improvements, if we're smart about how we invest, and we can look at refits to get a sixth or even seventh die.
- Location
- Mobile, Alabama
We have not felt the full force of an annoyed military. They got after us for abatement efforts and curtailed them for safety reasons. If we start losing the confidence of them as whole not just the Talons? We could very well be fired and be forced to play a new character who has more requirements on them. Or have our MARV spending flat out limited.
I believe that one of the benefits of the Titan's modular hardpoint setup is that they can utilize weapons which are developed and deployed after the Titan chassis is deployed.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah, but we get them slower and getting to a point where we actually push Nod back becomes much, much harder.
There are real payoffs in terms of "progress against Nod, ease of doing more mitigation" to throwing a lot of dice into the military. I'm going to go back and do my own count of the "hole" soon enough, though, and we can talk about it then.
I mean, you're right, but there are two separate points here.
1) We may be well advised to spend, say, 3 Free Dice on the military every turn for 2X turns instead of spending 6 Free Dice on the military for X turns. With the most burning priorities dealt with or underway and likely to require a serious ongoing 'crunch crunch crunch' to attend to, we can hopefully at least slow down a bit.
2) We need to keep an eye on things to make sure we actually know when we have attained the happy state of "able to chill out a little." There will always be something the military very much wants us to do, so we can't just take the fact that such things exist as proof that we need to keep throwing Free Dice or we end up in the same fix in the long run that canon GDI did.
It should be noted that military confidence is rising, not falling. Military confidence was lower for years, probably hitting its bottom some time around 2054. If we'd more aggressively funded military projects clear back in 2050 and on, it would likely be higher than it is now even if total dice expenditure wasn't much more.
I do think that we're unlikely to see MARV dice limited as long as we spend at least 5 dice on things other than MARVs. The problem is that this means a lot of Free Dice expenditure on the military is more or less mandatory.
Good call.
Predator Tank:
[Eyes Nod Avatar's modular hardpoints]
[Eyes Avatar's Claws of Vehicle Ripapartness]
[Eyes new Titan's modular hardpoints]
[backs slowly away]
The latest Carter quest had the result of the moon probes(they found water on the moon) and a Pardus Prospecting Result roll.
So i expect to see at least one of those two mentioned in the next main quest result post.
The mars probes arrive at Q1 2056 and enough have been send that they complete their mission in a single turn.
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We aren't over-investing in MARV, nor is the military likely to cut us off from the MARV project.
Since the start of this 4 year plan (assuming that the currently winning plan wins), we have spent 38 dice on the military outside of MARVs ( 4.2 dice per turn) and 22 dice on MARVs themselves (2.4 dice per turn), for an average of 6.6 dice per turn on the military.
Canon GDI spent 3 military dice per turn. We committed to spending 2 military dice per turn at the start of this plan. So long as we are spending at least 3 military dice per turn on non-MARV (preferably high or very high priority) projects, anything else we spend there is just gravy. They very much do prefer some items over others, but I guarantee that they are much happier with a die spent on a low-priority military project over that die not being spent on the military at all.
There are a lot of very, very good reasons to want to invest in military non-MARV projects. We definitely need more military assets to accomplish the goals that we want to accomplish. Worrying about getting fired for not spending 5+ dice on high priority military projects is not one of them.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Unless we discover something very very useful on Mars almost immediately, mining the Moon is vastly more practical than mining Mars, even with the relatively impressive propulsion tech we already have, or with the still more impressive propulsion we might develop.
I do think that if the military sees us pushing MARVs too hard they may well object on the grounds that it's an inefficient way to achieve military priorities.
I don't think we're in much danger of that happening as long as we keep throwing enough Free Dice at the military that they get 5 dice/turn regardless of our MARV expenditure... but the existence of Very High priorities we've left unattended for a long time is probably chafing at them.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
More likely for the sequel quest or if we get an absolutely brilliant roll. Plus I'm certain that requires a manned landing.
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This is probably what we're going to end up doing tbh, I was running the numbers on MARVs for fun a little while ago and the trends don't look good for them. Right now at this specific moment in time they're really useful as abatement/harvesting that protects itself, but once the military is available to protect more dedicated Tiberium sector harvesting/abatement the MARVs suddenly go right back to the bottom of the priority list. For example:
1. Red Zone Hub/SMARV fleet combo: ~5 dice and 100 Resources for 3 abatement, 25 income
2. Red Zone mining: ~5 dice and 125 Resources for 3 abatement, 30-60 income and 3 phases of glaciers unlocked
3. Red Zone containment lines: ~5 dice and 125 Resources for 6 abatement, 20-30 income
Alternatively:
1. Yellow Zone Hub/SMARV fleet combo: ~5 dice and 100 Resources for 3 abatement, 15 income and some refugees
2. Yellow Zone harvesting: ~4 dice and 80 Resources for 4 abatement, 5-10 income and more refugees
3. Yellow Zone fortress towns/intensification combo: ~4 dice (3 Infra 1 Tiberium) and 60 Resources for 1 abatement, 5-10 income and max refugees
These numbers are pretty heavily rounded just to make them pretty instead of a bunch of decimals that don't fit neatly into whole dice/multiples of 5 Resource costs, but they're mostly rounded in favor of MARVs the ugly numbers look even worse for them. Once the military gives the signal that they're ready to go on the offensive and take territory again I don't see any reason for us to do MARVs with Free dice. Putting 2 Free dice into a Red Zone MARV fleet/hub will be just straight up worse than taking those same Free dice and putting them into an actual dedicated Tiberium project that gets the nice fat Tiberium roll bonus and gets us more abatement/income for the same cost.
MARVs real niche is self-protecting abatement, which lets us at least make progress on something even while the military can't cover new commitments, but once that situation ends then we don't have much use for them. Alternatively once mutation gets really bad they're a way to turn base Military dice into abatement at a kinda meh but still acceptable exchange rate, but that argument doesn't hold if we're adding Free dice to the Military sector so that we can do MARVs because those Free dice would be getting even more abatement/income as Tib dice. Only when we're desperate enough to start needing our base Military pool to work on any abatement source possible rather than more generally useful equipment do I see MARVs really coming back.
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It just seems strange to me that people keep on saying {don't overinvest in MARVs or we'll piss off the military}. Which,
a) We haven't been. We haven't planned to. As far as I can tell, no one is even proposing to do so.
b) The military likes MARVs. They are net-positive military operations. They aren't a drain like tiberium harvesting operations. The worst thing about them is that they aren't as effective as that same die used somewhere else in the military, which means that MARVs are still a better use of free dice than every single other non-military expenditure in the military's minds.
I'm not arguing that we should invest more into MARVs. I'm arguing that the meme of {the military hates MARVs, and us for investing in them} needs to die, so we can focus on the real reasons why they aren't worth more than a token investment:
a) We have enough resources and abatemet that we don't need to focus on the acquisition of more over every other concern
b) We are going to unlock more efficient means of getting resources/abatement soon
c) We have more efficient ways to use military dice, given that we have several high priority projects right now
d) We are going to start to want to transition the use of free dice into space, and MARVs are more easily cut than other military projects
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- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Eh... a MARV's biggest advantages are its consistency and its ability to use Military dice for additional abatement. The latter hasn't really come into play yet since we underfunded Military in the first Plan and our best Tiberium options have been locked for this Plan. But the former? Every MARV can give a fixed amount of income and abatement. Regardless of NOD opposition or the escalating difficulty/cost of each phase of Tiberium operations, MARVs are more-or-less always going to work. That 4th phase of YZ Tiberium Harvesting we've been putting off for years is, in one sense, massively expensive because of how much we need to build up the military to take it. But one phase of YZ MARVs gives us almost as much mitigation (3 instead of 4) and more resource income as well. (15R instead of 5-10R.) And we can build MARVs whenever. I'm willing to bet that by the time we get near the end of the quest, we're going to be spamming MARVs since they'll be more cost-effective than Tiberium projects at that point.
Also, MARVs are our only way to target specific locations. Building them near our glacier mines has probably been a big help in keeping them secure so far, and anywhere that we feel could use more security/presence we can build a MARV hub near.
Also, MARVs are our only way to target specific locations. Building them near our glacier mines has probably been a big help in keeping them secure so far, and anywhere that we feel could use more security/presence we can build a MARV hub near.
I think we should finish the current 2 MARV projects we've already started (and need to hit our FYP target) but after they're done it's time to take stock of where the military is and what other operations they can support. I'd probably approve of getting the Red-7 South MARV hub built and filled just so we've got our glaciers covered and have MARVs roaming the entirety of the American Red Zone (I think in the fluff a significant amount of RZ growth since 2050 has been R-6 and R-7 reaching towards each other and connecting up into one long super-RZ that spans both continents). But beyond that, which is already overshooting our FYP target with 6 instead of 5, I'm not sure we really need any more MARVs.
And "they let us turn Military dice into abatement" is valid, but only if we have zero Free dice in the Military and are poaching solely out of the base Military dice pool. Once we start putting Free dice into the military to do MARVs it's no longer getting abatement with Military dice it's getting abatement with Free dice, and those Free dice would get a better exchange rate in the Tiberium sector than on MARVs.
It might be consistent but it's also worse, a YZ SMARV fleet costs more dice and Resources to get operational in exchange for less abatement, sure that might change at some theoretical point in the future but the numbers sure as hell don't favor them right now. The Red Zone numbers are even worse for MARVs and we've been doing enough repeated Red Zone stuff to see the general trends and know that the cost isn't majorly changing anytime soon.
And "they let us turn Military dice into abatement" is valid, but only if we have zero Free dice in the Military and are poaching solely out of the base Military dice pool. Once we start putting Free dice into the military to do MARVs it's no longer getting abatement with Military dice it's getting abatement with Free dice, and those Free dice would get a better exchange rate in the Tiberium sector than on MARVs.
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- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ah, just gotta be brief right now, but I had a quick thought on this: While there are lots of MARV locations total, we're kinda halfway towards filling out South America.
RZ-6 North: Complete.
RZ-6 South: Complete.
YZ-5a: In Progress.
YZ-5b: Unstarted.
YZ-5c: Unstarted.
BZ-8: Unstarted.
Even just slow-rolling it with 1/die a turn, we could wall off South America and then severely reduce our military presence there to go elsewhere.