Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
[X] Plan Catching-Up The Military
- Location
- Philippines
Are we winning, guys?
It's hard to see when all I see are a gaggle of numbers being thrown around.
It's hard to see when all I see are a gaggle of numbers being thrown around.
Huh. It's almost like my fear that losing so many planes in the exchange was right. Who would have thunk it. Are Firehawks being outfitted with shimmer shields? That might cut down on the plasma breakfast they are getting?
Also how long and intensives is the recalibrating of the shields anyway? Can it be done in flight like midair refeuling or is it strictly done on the ground in a hanger?
Also how long and intensives is the recalibrating of the shields anyway? Can it be done in flight like midair refeuling or is it strictly done on the ground in a hanger?
- Location
- Northish
Against Tib: not really but certainly better than OTL GDI, concentrations are not immediately catastrophic
Against NOD: slowly be steadily pushing the front and eroding their recruitment base, India is looking to be a mother when we get around to it
Against Scrin: we are still trying to make the overwhelming tech disparity as fast as possible, prospects in a full-on invasion look grim
Against our own government: the racists and plutocrats hate us so we are doing something right.
aledeth
The Flesh is Weak
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Shimmer shields require the platform be designed to use them from the start, or at the least an extensive redesign to fit them. I doubt we'll get the option to build the next-gen Firehawk (that might not even mount shimmer shields) until we have more of the upgrade slate that GM mentioned last page, so we don't really have a good solution at present to the Barghest issue that isn't 'more Apollo'.
Anti air lasers on our frames would probably help quite a bit, but we have not even researched them yet, let alone it is not guaranteed that we could even mount them on Firehawks. So yes, just building more Apollos sounds like our best current option.
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[X] Plan Catching-Up The Military
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So why do these have a - through them at present? Is it that they aren't viable actions with lunar investment/development so low?
kelgar04
Knight Watcher
- Location
- Here and no were
We've got them in a vice and they seem to be screaming.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
I think the Lunar Water Mines are because there's frankly no point to building them until we've got local colonies that need to be supplied with massive quantities of water. Any orbital stations are currently cheaper to be supplied from Earth, and what habitats we've got on the moon so far need little enough of it that it's easy enough to keep topping them off with the rest of the supplies delivered when the ore transports drop off their cargo to pick up the ore. If they even need water and aren't just unmanned outposts, though the Exploration Research Outposts is definitely manned. It's small enough however that a single delivery every week is more than enough for all their supplies, water included.
As for the Helium 3 Harvesting... I think that's very much a case of this stuff is so scarce even in the 'rich' regions that we need massive infrastructure and colonies built up to render the scale of operation needed for economical harvesting possible.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
@Ithillid , once the Air Force gets enough 'comprehensive technologies' such as energy weapons and neurohelmets, are they considering a new multirole fighter to replace the Firehawk? Not in the sense of "do we get a multibillion dollar development project now," but in the sense that there's some discussion of it?
Are we winning?
Well, short term, we're pretty sure Nod can't bulldoze us via military conquest, and we just might be able to bulldoze them if we really push it, so arguably yes.
Medium term, Kane's been forted up in that unattackable Threshold tower for nearly ten years working on some shit, and we don't know what it is, and what he does when he emerges from occlusion is likely to have big unpredictable impacts, so we don't know.
Long term, we still have no means of stopping tiberium from eating the Earth by some time in the 2100s, and we're a long, long way from evacuating the entire human population into space, so... we're not winning yet.
Aircraft tend to be lightly built. Even if we could retrofit a Firehawk with shimmer shields, all it'd do is stop like... I dunno, 15% of the plasma beam hitting the Firehawk.
85% of a plasma beam that rips your plane apart and kills you is probably still going to be enough to rip your plane apart and kill you.
What would observation stations on the moon accomplish that couldn't be accomplished by orbiting satellites? Aside from being a good place to mount a really big telescope, but really big telescopes aren't helpful when what you need is full observation of the whole sky all the time.
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The impression I got from its performance is very different.
That it came uncomfortably close to parity with the Firehawk, not that it was superior.
Else we would have been building a lot more Apollos a lot earlier, and would be looking at other options as well.
Stuff like hypermaneuverability helps, but we went Macross Missile Massacre for a reason.
The Banshee can pull 15 gs, which is something no GDI aircraft can match. But the Sidewinder missile can pull 60 g maneuvers over a range of at least 20km, and the QAAM as portrayed does not perform worse than the older missile.
Fair enough.
But in my opinion, that did not come across very well in the situation portrayed at St Petersburg.
I quote:
The tactical situation I'm reading:
This says a Firehawk force carrying a mixed payload of bombs and a few missiles tangled in air to air combat with a Barghest force that was specced entirely for air to air. The weight of the bombs imposing a maneuverability malus in addition to them not carrying enough missiles for the job.
That was a situation where the Barghests held most of the advantages:
- Less dead weight because no bombs against Firehawks carrying bombs
- Element of surprise since they didnt see the Barghests ahead of time in Setigory
- Limited appropriate enemy munitions, because a wing of unescorted Firehawks carrying enough 500 pound and 2000 pound bombs to level a ground base arent carrying enough QAAMs for air to air combat against dedicated interceptors.
- Short range missiles meaning that they are only fighting a fraction of the wing at a time
I thought under the circumstances, the 5 Firehawks for 6 Barghests under those conditions was actually pretty good.
And, critically, it seemed that the IC Air Force agreed, which is why they did not freak out at the results.
A situation where the workhorse multirole aircraft of the Air Force enjoyed all the advantages and could only sustain parity exchanges at 3:1 numerical odds would have been a Very High Priority for replacement or upgrade a year ago otherwise.
Instead in that time no concerns with the Firehawk specifically were mentioned. Orca and Aurora, but not Firehawk.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thats what the Skywatch system is for. Luna itself is not much better or worse for deep space telescopes.
- Location
- USA
This is ignoring a fundamental part of plan quests is that we do not just do actions for the now but also for the future several years or more down the line. Doing actions that are only profitable now is a good way to end up behind. Idle dice in general need to be avoided, more so in categories where we know the projects will be needed at some point.
- Location
- The internet
[X]Plan Robots, Ace Combat, and Combine Harvesters
- Location
- The Underdark
Both of those are for lunar settlements, and you have not unlocked those because you have gone for an economyfirst strategy.
Yes.
So, overall, what the Air Force think they need.
1. Fighter/Interceptors: With the Brotherhood of Nod continuing to seriously contest the skies, dedicated, or relatively dedicated high speed fighter/interceptors are needed as a high end option to help provide an air superiority role. Right now, this is the Apollo.
2. Close Air Support Orca: One of the primary jobs of the Air Force is to play a supporting role. Being able to interdict the battlefield, and act as flying artillery is the Air Force's first job, and one that it wants to be able to get back to doing.
3. Multirole Fighter: Firehawk Mark II.
And they are generally going to be moving back and forth between those three, as their primary concern. Now, there are other things that they are interested in on occasion, things like patrol aircraft, drone warfare, and the like, but right now, it is those three.
At the time, it was. Second line multirole fighter going up against top of the line interceptors and walking away with relatively equal losses is a good thing. However, what has the Air Force worried is the Barghest-bis, which adds more speed, and missiles. Can you, to some extent, bury them in numbers? Yeah. Does the Air Force want to do that? Absolutely Not. Pilots are expensive, more fighter factories is significantly less so, and does not come out of their budget anyway.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
So this is yet another reason we'd want Wingman drones ASAP huh? Because it means that we're effectively doubling the size of the air force. Whilst also making it so that half the new air force, if we only go 1-1 drones to piloted aircraft, are fully disposable. Which means they can use tactics were the 'safe' target for the Nod aircraft to shoot down is the drone, whilst attacking the piloted aircraft means the drone is almost certainly going to shoot them down. Even if the drone is then mostly useless for the rest of the battle because it's gone 'dumb' upon losing the controller. At least until a pilot grabs the 'dumb' drone to replace their lost drone.
And GDI would absolutely take both results of the tactic. Because it means there's either a bloody few weeks at the start of a conflict which sees a lot of pilots on both sides die, before the industrial advantage of GDI kicks in and from then on Nod pilots start facing off three or four to one with piloted aircraft, ignoring the Wingman drones which are still there. Or Nod destroys a lot of drones all the time, but in exchange only loses a trickle of pilots and aircraft. Whereas GDI keeps needing to replace their Wingman drones which their industrial advantage is entirely capable of doing but they also only lose a trickle of pilots and still manage to usually pull off the airstrikes and other missions which they were performing when intercepted by Nod.
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