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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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This is all the natural 100s and natural 99s we rolled throughout the quest. Unfortunately, the search function doesn't appear able to look for dice rolls or vote tallys, so I had to do this manually. :sour: Hence why it took a while.

Q1 2050 Rail Link Reconstruction 100
Railways were largely un-destroyed and not in super-critical need of repair. 50 progress discount on Phase 1. (And likely into further phases as well.)

Q1 2051 Blue Zone Reconstruction 99

Q1 2051 Refugee Camps 99

Q2 2051 Glacier Mining 99

Q3 2051 Power Grid 100
++ Energy bonus. Description was that Tidal Power Plants were brought online at the same time due to Tiberium Algae. Possibly connected to further Tidal Power Plants becaoming available in Q2 2055.

Q3 2051 Tiberium Algae 100
Permanent +5 RpT from a project that would have normally given none.

Q2 2052 North Boston 100
Improved microchips from 10nm to 5nm. Permanent tech quality improvement, exact effects unknown.

Q2 2053 RZ Forgotten Support 100
Reduced Forgotten hiring price by 5 RpT due to less overhead than expected from local leaders. (We currently still allocate 15 RpT to the Forgotten.)

Q4 2054 YZ Fortress Towns 99

Q3 2054 Hydrofoils 99

Q3 2054 Security Review (Services) 100
Services department exceptionally clean, streamlined to give permanent 12.5% progress discount to all projects. (No, really, Scrin Research is still 0/350 where before it was 0/400.)

Q4 2055 Interdepartmental Communications 99

Q1 2056 GDSS Enterprise 100
New space construction technology discovered. Permanent -5 progress discount on all Space Stations.

Q3 2056 Mecca/Jeddah 99

Q3 2056 Stealth Disruptor Development 100
Technology quality improvement. Also lead to availability of current follow-up Stealth Disruptor Development project.

Q4 2056 Governor Class 100
New shipbuilding technology discovered. Permanent -15 progress discount on all naval ships.

Q1 2057 Lunar Regolith Harvesting 99

Q2 2057 Chemical Fertilizer Plants 99

Q3 2057 Security Review (Heavy Industry) 99

Q1 2058 Recruitment Drives 99

Total: Nine 100s, Eleven 99s.

Q3 2051 might have been a compounded crit? Possible compounded crits: Q1 2051, Q3 2056.

Also, something else. Looking through old posts, Sarang was our second place vote for Secretary last time. We easily could have had her instead of Seo right now. What if things were reversed? What if she was our Secretary right now and Seo was giving us the same deal for his +5 to Technology trait? Would we take the same deal?

Edit: To be more explicit on what my point is here. Some of those crit results are equivalent to the same traits we're voting for right now. And as shown above, with the number of dice we roll we're all but certain to get many extra crits with Sarang's trait. If you personally have such a great dislike of Sarang from her singular quote in this update that you never want her in the quest at all, I can't persuade you otherwise. But she absolutely has the strongest trait on offer. Just because she's not a perfectly likeable paragon doesn't mean she wouldn't be of massive service to GDI.

Also, crits are fun. Both to read and, I imagine, to write. Who doesn't like crits?
 
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[X] Michael O'Brian
[X] Brigadier General Tali Jackson
[X] Arya Gulati
[X] Graduates
-[X] Orbital
-[X] Military



Edit: Changed Enhanced Security Services for BG Tali Jackson
 
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Phalfpipe said:
The suit factories are starting to seem very important.
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With General Jackson's dice, we may be able to cram in a single zone armor factory before mid-2059, just to see if that relieves the pressure a bit.

BoSPaladin said:
Narratively, with Zocom taking on protective duty, and our heavy support and investment into Zocom I like this Idea. Though, things being what they are, definitely would like to see some zone armour factory's soon if possible.
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Notably, the extra zone armor factories don't directly support ZOCOM. What they do do is give Ground Forces some units of regular power-armored infantry who can handle operations that require power armor but do not, strictly speaking, require ZOCOM.

Because ZOCOM has a whole array of specialized training and equipment beyond just "are all wearing Zone Armor."

Taffer86 said:
As much as I like Brigadier-General Tali, I worry we are overloading our military responsibilities. We already have so much to do and I'd like to focus on our targets.
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I'm not sure what this means.

As a general rule, the military is LESS overloaded when we spend MORE dice on it, because it means we have more to do. Furthermore, we can spend almost any number of extra Military dice cheaply because there are many 10 R/die projects in the Military category.

We were already staring down the barrel of having to spend Free dice, in large numbers, if we wanted the military adequately prepared for the war everyone expects to blow up some time in 2059-60. General Jackson* may save us from having to do as much of that. Granted, we may struggle to activate all the dice for a while, but it's well worth the investment. And the projects she'll be expecting us to do are relatively modest.

So honestly, I don't really know what you mean by saying that there's a problem in this area or that hiring General Jackson would make it worse.
___________________________

*(her last name- I dunno, I figure we should extend her the same courtesy as General Eisenhower or General Zhukov)
 
Ithillid said:
Colonel Michael McNeil (Ret)
Dammit Granger. Those were internal for a reason
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Never change. Granger never change.

Ithillid said:
The same problem applies to the Initiative First. Yes they are an issue, but you have to work with them. A system where everyone gets a voice, is a system where everyone gets a voice, and their voice is weaker now than it has ever been
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It sucks right? Having to be an adult and put up with assholes to honor democratic systems. Still I have been very happy at their sidelining.

Ithillid said:
Much of the work has been done by all in one land train tracklayers, using a heavily stripped down version of the MARV base. In the front is the leveller, a large trench digging tool that carves through the land. Behind it is the filler, which provides a maximally flat path for the rail line. In a separate vehicle, there is the tracklayer, which is similar in two parts, dropping a series of concrete ties, and then laying and nailing down the track. Both are extremely slow, making about 750 meters an hour. However, that is still an impressive pace of laying down track across ground that had not been previously prepared. Working in shifts, these vehicles can be operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and have been for the past three months
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This is just super cool and I love it.

I love these little asides that expand the world or show off spun off tech. It's one of my favorite parts of the quest.

Ithillid said:
However, more privately, the warlords sent over a small token of their own genuine appreciation, samples, technical specifications, and datasheets for the production of Brotherhood lightweight armor composites
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These dudes are dead if this every gets back to Kane.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Notably, the extra zone armor factories don't directly support ZOCOM. What they do do is give Ground Forces some units of regular power-armored infantry who can handle operations that require power armor but do not, strictly speaking, require ZOCOM.

Because ZOCOM has a whole array of specialized training and equipment beyond just "are all wearing Zone Armor."
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Oh totally but. "contaminated yellow zone can be protected with regular troops in zone armour freeing up Zocom." Is still a win for me.
 
Simon_Jester said:
We can survive it, but he's not actually giving us that much unless we build an insane number of fusion phases.

Exactly how much Energy do you expect us to need over the course of the Plan?
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I mean, if we want to not be powering our Inhibitors and our automated shipyards and our Zone Armor factories and our heavy robotics facilities and whatever piece of Scrin-based Clarke tech we happen to pull out of our hats this Plan with liquid Tiberium...
 
One more quick set of replies:
Derpmind said:
@uju32 We have six branches of the military, not just the Navy. We can't afford to build all the projects for any one branch. We have to prioritize building one new naval ship type at a time. If we built the ideal anti-NOD navy we'd end up critically behind somewhere else.
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As Simon points out below your post? It doesnt particularly change the amount of resources devoted to the Navy.

RnD is not a cost driver for naval projects; most new projects only require a single die and 10-20R. Rollout is the cost driver, and assuming that said projects are all the same cost(yes, its a big assumption, work with me), 6x 200 point shipyards for Frigates would cost the same as 3x 200 point Frigate shipyards + 2x 200 point Escort carrier shipyards + 1× 200 point Monitor shipyard.

What Im trying to figure out is if we're better off doing 12 of A, or if 6 of A, 6 of B might be a better fit for our immediate purposes.
Simon_Jester said:
Yes and no.

@TripleTango 's point was that the Nod naval threat is likely to revolve around submarines, small surface ships ("piracy" that may in practice be more like "national commerce raiding"), and (he did not mention so much, but let's credit him with being aware) land-based aviation...

From stealthed bases.

This is the part that complicates things, because localizing those bases requires getting close, and if we didn't have the prospect of good counter-stealth sensors in the near future we'd basically have to just give up and accept that we can't find and take out the bases, short of using ion cannons to pulverize very inch of coastline in large sections of the world.
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Satellite recon has its demonstrated limits inquest. Aircraft overflights have no persistence.
Longrange surveillance UAVs controlled by satellite dont seem to have ever taken off(pun intended) in this AU, possibly due to occasional comm disruptions and Nod electronic warfare.

A squadron of LCS/monitors on the other hand can spawn camp a suspect stretch of coastline for weeks at a few tens of km offshore, at a fraction of the cost of a carrier strike group, with enough offshore firepower to wreck battalions at a time, dropping off surveillance drones and special forces teams until said bases show their hand, at which point the big girls of the fleet can act.

Thats not really a capability that a CSG can perform at acceptable cost and risk.
And that precise sort of capability forces Nod investment in local defenses around their own bases as well as industrial redundancy
Resources spent that way are not being spent on ocean strike variant Vertigos and new submarines or Nod cruisers.

Which is why Im considering an early LCS introduction.
Simon_Jester said:
While the underlying logic of your overall assessment is valid, you're missing something important here.

GDI's navy knows everything you just said. They are not incapable of formulating the kind of plans you describe. They are broadly aware of the character of the threats Nod poses to GDI shipping, because they fight against those threats on a regular basis. They have no doubt formulated plans for what they envision their future navy doing, because otherwise they wouldn't even have ship designs to send us and say "start developing this ship class."

They have a plan. What they need from us right now is not us deciding what ship classes they need and making some 25/50/25 balance or whatever. What they need is, and I quote:

"The navy sees the escort carriers (especially with navalized A-16s) as the next major important area to invest in, alongside finishing up existing projects such as the long awaited final hydrofoil yard. Additionally, Point Defense Refits need to be completed before the Navy can possibly engage in large scale offensive operations."

There are likely several reasons for this. Given that our main naval strike aircraft is VTOL-capable, light or 'escort' carriers are also quite functional as multirole warships that (unlike our existing heavy capital ships) can be risked closer to Nod waters with less extensive support and escort. This makes them useful both for the kind of reconnaissance "find enemy base" operation you envision the monitors engaging in, and for strike missions against enemy bases that aren't protected by too overwhelming of an air defense. Just because 'escort' is in the name of the carriers doesn't mean the carriers can't do anything else, after all.

The Navy called for cruisers and escort carriers long ago, almost immediately after Tiberium War Three ended. We should not be trying to plan ahead beyond that goal if they think those are the ships they require. If we need to have a conversation about the strategic role of GDI's navy, let us have it after we have built them up the facilities they need to produce a modern
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The Navy called for hydrofoils, cruisers and (later and most recently)escort carriers.
We built two thirds of the hydrofoils, then pivoted to finishing cruisers because there were broader strategic issues in play. Our judgement remains a factor here; thats why in all but the most extreme options we get to choose; the military are advisors.

This would not be the first time we have made these sort of decisions. And it wont be the last.

And I strongly disagree with your last statement.
Part of our job is planning ahead beyond the military's immediate requirements or goals.
Simon_Jester said:
Oh hell no. No no no.
We have the Super Orca design finalized. It is capable of fitting our modern air-to-air missiles. While a Super Orca firing QAAMs is probably inadequate as a counter to Nod's high-end air superiority fighters, it is more than adequate to engage the bulk of Nod's air forces, most of which are themselves VTOLs.

We are not designing a new generation of aircraft to fly off the escort carriers; the escort carriers are designed to work with an existing aircraft we already built. Escort carriers are not an optional part of a complex force mix at this point. They are what the Navy wants next.
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.......
Wingman Drones are aircraft. Thats what Im referring to, not an Apollo 2 or MegaOrca A17.

If we want Wingman Drones on the Assault Ships and Escort Carriers bulking up their air wings and providing a firepower and survivability boost for their manned aircraft, we need to have the RnD done before we design the ships so the ship designers can allow for them ahead of time.
That way, whenever they're produced, they are a slot-in upgrade.

Thats a 1 die, 20R RnD project.
 
Simon_Jester said:
So honestly, I don't really know what you mean by saying that there's a problem in this area or that hiring General Jackson would make it worse
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Ithillid said:
[ ] Brigadier General Tali Jackson
The hero of the battle of Cheyenne Mountain, Jackson will be somewhat difficult to poach from the Steel Talons. However, if it means giving them funding, she would be happy to move into the Treasury to direct military development operations.
(+2 Military Dice)
(Must complete all Steel Talons Development projects by end of plan, and deploy/build at least one factory for each one)
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Okay, we have 3 Steel Talons development projects and we need to deploy them by the end of the term. So 3 dice total on the development, and lets say 200 progress each of the deployments, so that's 3-4 dice each. So we have to spend at least around 12-15 dice on this. With our mandatory military spending, I think that it would be too much for our free dice to push for it. Unless you wish for a one term thing, which is an option. Still, I think putting a Graduates die on military is better.

On her name, I always think she's Tali from Mass Effect.
 
Taffer86 said:
Okay, we have 3 Steel Talons development projects and we need to deploy them by the end of the term. So 3 dice total on the development, and lets say 200 progress each of the deployments, so that's 3-4 dice each. So we have to spend at least around 12-15 dice on this. With our mandatory military spending, I think that it would be too much for our free dice to push for it. Unless you wish for a one term thing, which is an option. Still, I think putting a Graduates die on military is better.

On her name, I always think she's Tali from Mass Effect.
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12-15 dice committed to Steel Talons, when taking Gen. Jackson adds 30 dice (+2 dice per quarter for 15 quarters) over the rest of the plan. Even with the extra expenses, we come out ahead this Plan, and are far better off in future Plans. It's really unfortunate that the assassination worked if you ask me. I really would've liked having 7 dice natively in Military. It would've been more than sufficient to keep the military perpetually happy without needing to spend Free Dice.
 
Derpmind said:
This is all the natural 100s and natural 99s we rolled throughout the quest. Unfortunately, the search function doesn't appear able to look for dice rolls or vote tallys, so I had to do this manually. :sour: Hence why it took a while.
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I've added the following to my above post:

Edit: To be more explicit on what my point is here. Some of those crit results are equivalent to the same traits we're voting for right now. And as shown above, with the number of dice we roll we're all but certain to get many extra crits with Sarang's trait. If you personally have such a great dislike of Sarang from her singular quote in this update that you never want her in the quest at all, I can't persuade you otherwise. But she absolutely has the strongest trait on offer. Just because she's not a perfectly likeable paragon doesn't mean she wouldn't be of massive service to GDI.

Also, crits are fun. Both to read and, I imagine, to write. Who doesn't like crits?
 
[X] Sarang Mikoyan
[X] Michael O'Brian
[X] Brigadier General Tali Jackson
[X] Graduates
-[X] Infrastructure
-[X] Orbital
 
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[X] Sarang Mikoyan
[X] Brigadier General Tali Jackson

Crits have powerful narrative effects. Like this one for what would have happened if that 99 on stabilizers counted:



Wouldn't you like to see philly get love like that?
 
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Ithillid said:
Post Election Retrospectives
I never did say many things about Litvinov. Didn't feel like I needed to. But she won and it would be remiss for me to not share the perspective of the losing side. For her, it was a fight for the soul of the Initiative. For me, it was an election for the seat of an ascendant mankind that has taken strides to the stars. Yes, perhaps the appellation "Cynic" was one fit for my campaign. I would never have the aspiration to censure what had been — and are — my superiors and comrades of the yester-decades. I would never have the temerity to strike back against what had been the foundation of the GDI, of the old networks that tied the world together before the Second War.

No, I would not have done a hundredth of what Litvinov had planned and would set in motion in her Administration, for better and worse.​
– Excerpts from The Unclassified (2080) by Arthur Hackett

As much as I like my job and my boss as well as his boss, I am allowed my opinions. And it is my opinion that RAdm. Carter is a political idealist. And there is no place for such idealists in the august seat of the GDI. I wouldn't lie and say it didn't hurt to watch him burn the effort of coffeeless sleepless nights managing his campaign, but I already am aware of that one worst case scenario. With Tran backing out, it was a coin-toss on Hackett or Carter getting IF votes. As luck would have it for Litvinov, Carter got the split votes and he burned them away. Honestly- that man…

Hm? Litvinov. Hah, "Idealist" may be her running platform but to call that woman one would be an unfunny joke.

Let this one be off the records, if you will– One does not strive to win the soul of the GDI if one does not intend to change it.​
– Raw interview footage from Sarang Mikoyan for Initiative Times (February 2058)
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So, Hackett is saying that Litvinov was both an idealist, and willing to go a lot farther in what she's willing to do. Mikoyan actually shows some red flags here, because of how she discounts the possibility of Litvinov being an idealist, just because Litvinov wants to change the soul of the GDI. Or because she is seeking power.

[X] Graduates
-[X] Tiberium
-[X] Orbital
[X] Enhanced Security Services
[X] Brigadier General Tali Jackson
[X] Hideo Daishi
 
uju32 said:
We built two thirds of the hydrofoils, then pivoted to finishing cruisers because there were broader strategic issues in play. Our judgement remains a factor here; thats why in all but the most extreme options we get to choose; the military are advisors.

This would not be the first time we have made these sort of decisions. And it wont be the last.

And I strongly disagree with your last statement.
Part of our job is planning ahead beyond the military's immediate requirements or goals.
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Two things:
1.We did, in fact, most of the hydrofoils and the cruisers. As the Navy asked for.

2.It will damn well be the last decision we ever make if we consistently ignore the military's 'immediate requirements or goals' chasing wunderwaffe and optimization.

I mean, we tried this shit with the Predator RWS and got slammed with -5 PS every turn if we kept lollygagging. Do you want that with fifty kiloton ships? Because that's how we'd get it.

uju32 said:
Wingman Drones are aircraft. Thats what Im referring to, not an Apollo 2 or MegaOrca A17.
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We haven't even deployed the Super Orca and we need that for the Carriers. Now you want us to design an entirely new aircraft just so the Escort Carrier can be redesigned around it?

-5 PS a turn, man. Guarantee it.
 
[X] Enhanced Security Services
[X] Arya Gulati
[X] Brigadier General Tali Jackson
[X] Graduates
-[X] Infrastructure
-[X] Orbital
 
[X] Brigadier General Tali Jackson
[X] Graduates (Pick 2 areas)
-[X] Infrastructure
-[X] Tiberium
[X] Michael O'Brian
[X] Arya Gulati
 
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