I think we should do alternative railgun munitions soon. They're likely to be something that improves every branch of our military and they're also a plan goal
You have a wide selection of concerns, and most of them are at least partially valid. I might not be able to address all of them, but I am going to give it a shot.
To begin with, I am definitely not saying take this or else and I am definitely not saying "take this deal or I will get angry" it is more that I can see a point where I would get overwhelmed on the horizon, especially if you add another six or eight dice to the pool, and so am beginning to give you options to shed some dice now, to begin doing projects like building a bunch of renewables, or building housing, or automating munitions. But many of those are locked behind plan goals, like the one to do housing is locked behind completing the Arcology goal first. Same with the Munitions one, where you committed to doing a bunch of munitions production, and only after that can you spin it off.
However, lot of turns you are not spending 12 to 24 Energy. Right now during the war, yeah, you are, and I don't actually expect that you will instantly jump on this, and there are interesting stories that I can tell about the extingincies that the war and the frenetic pace of construction. It is more for after the war, when you are starting to slow down and move free dice away from the energy guzzling military sector, and you are spending 1-3 energy a turn. Additionally it is an indication of what similar things you are going to see elsewhere. Because you are going to have a fairly sizable number of these options showing up.
Beyond that, this is also a mechanic to respecialize more broadly. By taking dice out of the pool, you give me more flexibility to give you options to put dice back into the pool, either in a different area, or in the same area with the addition of some per turn trickle of supplies from an automated die. I also don't want to take away some of the mechanics that give you more dice regularly. The idea of building out your administrative and bureaucratic capacity is fairly core to this quest. The thing is that it also comes with being willing to give up some of that control in order to more broadly manage the system.
So, one thing that I am pretty sure I have mentioned previously is that I am going to give you an option to remove some of the long term expenses. It will be somewhat politically expensive, but you can begin shedding those commitments starting next Reallocation. It was not something Granger got, for multiple reasons. Both because of his political ineptitude, but also because taking even five resources away from another department would be a significant problem. But with Seo, he has both the political skill, and is pouring hundreds of resources into all of the other departments, so diverting fifteen of those away to pay the Forgotten is a much more marginal expense.
Still leaves the issue of minor inefficiency. I do not participate here much, but am a micromanager in most strategy games I play, and can see how a sub-optimal(however slightly) option will never appeal to plan optimizers.
Not sure about the Automated Medical Assistants. It is an expensive project that doesn't deliver much Health. (Maybe later projects do?)
And I think we are overlooking the usefulness of more Ablats. Those are still at Very High Priority.
Good amount of naval projects though.
[] Plan Tis But A Scratch
This appears to push forward without having a chance of more Fortress Towns completing. That seems bad.
[] Plan MORE POWER But No Tiberium Power
Same issue. We need to have the military's back with new Fortress Towns. Otherwise this is just raiding, not taking territory.
I'm sure it's being done in the hope of being efficient and not wasting progress but would it be worth putting the 2 dice for the frigates into the firehawks in the hope of finishing them this turn?
Still leaves the issue of minor inefficiency. I do not participate here much, but am a micromanager in most strategy games I play, and can see how a sub-optimal(however slightly) option will never appeal to plan optimizers.
Think of it like having maxed out a resource in a strategy game, where any "extra" of that resource is discarded. That's basically where we are with dice right now. So it isn't really a permanent loss of a die, so much as a temporary one, in exchange for a permanent per turn bonus.
After some more deliberation I am changing my vote:
[X] Plan MORE POWER But No Tiberium Power
Mainly for a very high chance to get Rail Networks 4, even if giving up a chance of finishing next tier of Fortress Towns stings, and high investment in lunar heavy metal mines and Kudzu.
this plan is good and hits all of the right points- maybe shifting some free dice away from the military towards space might, just might, be a good idea; but given that we still aren't out of the war yet, even if it is starting to wrap up, I can understand why the investment there is as high as it is.
[X] Plan MORE POWER But No Tiberium Power @Simon_Jester
Is there a reason you dont have any dice on Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting?
It would only need 1 dice.
From the description it would help military logistics and holding of captured territory.
[X] Plan MORE POWER But No Tiberium Power
[X] Plan We Need Power, Ships, Renegotiations, And Reconstruction
[X] Plan Phoenix, Maximal
I feel like we could wait a turn to Q4 to see how the war shakes out - whether it continues winding down other than 1-2 regions that's more "mopping up" than major offensive pushes (American South, Western Europe), or if it's spinning back up to global fighting round 2 - but it's not critical enough for me to bother arguing for it.
At this point, I'm mainly concerned that we not expend unnecessary PS prior to Reallocation (barring merchantman conversions), because it'll affect what leeway we have on overall Plan Goals unless we take a smaller percentage of the budget or something.
Pretty much all of our plan goals, other than Karachi, are achievable. Our orbital goals are ooc-confirmed to be non-negotiable, and we want to do the entire military set anyways. The only real sticking points are Arcologies (which we kind of want, but are going to be difficult to justify due to the war), Kudzu (where the die bonus is very shiny), consumer goods (sabotage fears), and food reserves (which the politicos and people, really, really want, even though we as players are more attracted to just about any other agricultural project).
So realistically, I'm not too worried about needing to go for a maximal reallocation plan. We only need enough to renegotiate Karachi, which is with someone who works directly for us. Other possible renegotiations will be opportunistic on our part, rather than mandatory.
Thought I'd do a review on your replan commitment issue as I fear your missing a few tihngs.
Problems to handle:
First off your all getting obsessed with getting to the 240 mark at the cost of going to 44 from 72 political support. Not a great plan all told. You don't need a full retraction. Only to remove the unviable parts.
Plan goals to address:
Orbital is at [6d100 dice +26 a dice]=450 averagex8 turns=3600 points average gains:
Enterprise is a mission goal and at (Progress 102/1535) or 1433 points remaining is 3.184 turns worth of dice for completion or of 19/48 dice commited for the next two years to pull that off. Leaving 29 dice to use for orbital goals. Your station build points goal gets eliminated by this +10 PS bonus and progress on other goals to boot.
More concerning is the 5x space mines goal. If you go heavy metal mines, it your remaining dice of 19d100+26 to use to buy it out with. 950+494=1414 in 450 point intervals. 1335 point with get you to +4 heavy metal(and start getting heavy metals reather than generic resources.) mines meaning one short for that route. So unless you count the surface rare metal gathering as mines in this case your going to need free dice or to go for the regolith to finish this one on average.
All in all orbital commitments are realistic. Doing the general +60 resources before it shifts to heavy metal resources means the income goal is irrelevant from this alone and we all know the Tiberium processing capacity limit would take massive work not to meet offhand.
Next big block is the Military dice commitments. 8d100+26 a turn x8 turns: 608 average military build points a turn. 76 per dice average.
-Complete OSRCT Phase 4: 585 military build points for plan commitment or an entire turn=1/8 of your military dice on average. so 8/64 military dice committed.
-Complete at least one more phase of Shell Plants: (143)=2 dice committed 10/64
-Railgun Munitions Development: 11/64
-Complete at least one more phase of Ablative Armor: (146)=2 dice 13/64
-Complete at least one more phase of URLS production: (200)=3 dice 16/64
-Develop and Deploy Mastodon: 1 dice development probably 3 deploy= 20/64
-Complete ASAT Phase 4 (184): 3 dice 23/64
So military goals are easy to pay off dice wise for a third of the pool.
-Complete at least one more phase of Blue Zone Arcologies
Infrastructure makes 504 on a average turn: 649 point required a full turn and 2 dice on average to complete at 8/48 dice. However its going also handle 4 consumer Goods for 2 energy so a good deal.
-Complete at least one more phase of Wadmalaw Kudzu Plantations
297 resources = 5/40 dice or a full turn and change. You do get +4 consumer good
Leaving your actual divisive goals to alter at:
Plan Goals
Capital Goods: 31 Points -2 Enterprize=29
Consumer Goods: 16 Points -2 Enterprize -4 BZ arcology-4 Kudzu=6
Food: 18 points in reserve
Complete at least four phases of Karachi Planned City
This is the main point of contention. Its 975 points or 12 infrastructure/tiberium dice. This is actually affordable dice wise. its just the issue of getting there... and things not imploding militarily, I fear with the navy being choppy and the BZ its going to support being under seige your not going to have an easy time of this.
Maybe a lunar mine can be taken off if your that attached to the free dice so don't want to spend at least one on those.
So what your actually arguing is the military viability of Karachi, the food storage goals, and the Giant pile of capital goods your behind in getting. Lunar mines ca probably be handled by clarifying if the rare metals gathering counts or not, because while its doable its also a tight margin not to address when your renegotiating anyway. The food is probably going to shift to a general food surplus at worse.
Of the last two items, Karachi is probably going to end up being put behind military goals. You have the dice to support this being build construction wise... its just you need goals to actually get the supplies to that point. The other issue is the BZ its going to supoort is now officially under siege. So political opponents are going to change goals to make that your problem.
Lets look at your over all congressional support:
4000 total=(1479 strong support /1160 weak support /669 weak opposition/692 strong opposition)
Obviously Strong support and opposition are going to mostly cancel each other. Same with the weaker reflection so in the end yuor at strong positive at 787, weak positive at 468: 1255 supporters or 31.375% support going in... or maybe 25.525% strong support with weak support getting half credit.
That isn't a great margin for real support going in. I doubt your going to get away with freeing up a your dice without recommiting them. I expect Karachi to get gated behind a year of mandatory support actions here. You can do it the last year of the plan if you can get things in place. Your goal is more to make it the military's fault if it doesn't happen despite all you've done.
The goal issue is the Capital good deficit. The only real sources of them are:
Agri: spider cotton plants +1 a project no upkeep.
L&C industry is loaded with capital and energy boosters.
As I said above, the Capital Goods quota is now 29 points uncovered and lots of energy commitments to make that work. Consumer Goods you only need 6 more of to complete your goal. So basically you don't need the full 240 goal to do things, you need much less. Spending yourselves into 44 points of PS on average plans seems a we bit dangerous going into a priority reshuffle like this. Particularly if you need to spend more to get some options.
The other factor is military confidence, but the only real issue with that is the low navy score. Steel Talons are just low unless they got a boost last turn. Its more of a personality thing with them.
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Looking at the plans:
Plan Tis But A Scratch: is more political suicide than most as this plan is going to more than half your PS [72 down to 33] before going in and just poking the congressional bear. That would not be a good idea.
Looking at the stats this quarter:
Housing: +40 (27 population in low quality housing) (-5 per turn from refugees)
Energy: +10 (+4 in reserve)
Logistics: +20 (-10 from raiding) (-7 from military activity)
Food: +18 (+10 in reserve)
Health: -1 (-8 from Wartime Demand) (-5 from Refugees)
Capital Goods: +13 (+37 in reserve) [-10 at End of War ] [+3 in Q1 2061, +2 in Q2 2061 ]
STUs: +13
Consumer Goods: +27 (-22 from demand spike) (+3 from Private Industry)
-Energy is only at +10 which is largely life.
-Logistics at +3 massively burdened and nearing a massive snarl that grinds everything to a halt.
-Health is just into negative territory at -1 overall
-Consumer goods at effectively +8, new population need kitchen appliances badly.
Logistics would improve if you fix up Indianapolis at least mostly. +3 is basically crunch time and outside of plans that repair Indianapolis the only thing upping it is the railroading expansion. Once logistics is this low your looking at a major supply chain snarl and seem to be missing it near completely... Your just asking to get wammied with all the capital goods spending logistics project once congress starts going after you to appease their constituents.
Seriously, it doesn't matter how much you have warehoused when you can't get the goods out of the factories. This war is just going to stall out at this rate... this turn even. Your going to get a new logistics requirement out of the replanning session. Probably should address that before going in.
Next big block is the Military dice commitments. 8d100+26 a turn x8 turns: 608 average military build points a turn. 76 per dice average.
-Complete OSRCT Phase 4: 585 military build points for plan commitment or an entire turn=1/8 of your military dice on average. so 8/64 military dice committed.
-Complete at least one more phase of Shell Plants: (143)=2 dice committed 10/64
-Railgun Munitions Development: 11/64
-Complete at least one more phase of Ablative Armor: (146)=2 dice 13/64
-Complete at least one more phase of URLS production: (200)=3 dice 16/64
-Develop and Deploy Mastodon: 1 dice development probably 3 deploy= 20/64
-Complete ASAT Phase 4 (184): 3 dice 23/64
So military goals are easy to pay off dice wise for a third of the pool.
First, the military analysis doesn't factor in the soon to be commitments to the Navy as a result of the Carrier Conversions, which is another 50 progress for the Conversions themselves, 120 for the Battleship Yards, and 240x3 for the standard yards, total of 890 progress, and roughly 12 dice. For an actual military required dice total of ~35 dice
Second, you are mistakenly assuming 8 turns remain. We only have 6 turns left to the end of the Plan. Q3 and 4 of 2060, and Q1, 2, 3 and 4 of 2061.
Third, with regards to Logistics, it is at +20, the stuff in parentheses has already been factored in. It is problematic that we have such a high malus from the raiding and the Regency War, but a more immediate problem is the Health situation. Also concerning is how at current refugee rates we have 8 turns until we run out of Housing.
