- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Ahh.
That changes the equation, then. Though it should be noted that we're probably going to need quite some time to scrape together the 20 Capital Goods price tag in any event. Especially with the ZOCOM situation kiiiind of pressuring us into a vein mining push in early 2062 at this rate, which is going to eat up quite a bit of Capital Goods.
(nods respectfully to QM)
(turns to talk to everybody)
More generally... Everyone? I have grave concerns about the leading plans. I think they are setting us up for a risk of Plan targets due to unlucky rolls in Q3 and Q4, or of being unable to use our dice on projects we would very much like to complete because we're forced to overspend to get 99% surefire completion of those Plan targets.
...
I am also uncomfortable with Roses Too not allocating any additional dice to fusion power besides the first one, because there's a 12% chance of the fusion plants not competing, and that would knock us down to zero or negative Energy if it happens, depending on which of Cryo's projects complete. More importantly, I think it is premature to do a radical shift to four Free dice on Agriculture dice and zero on Military, as Roses Too does. I think that doing this just to get two dice on Ranching Domes is counterproductive, because we will still have to spend additional dice on the domes in Q3 anyway, and possibly in Q4 if the rolls are bad, and it will be harder to find Free dice in those areas because we have even more quasi-mandatory Military dice spending to worry about if we want to get done all our actual Plan targets and somehow find room for the Zone Armor factories that are greatly desired. I do not think we will be realistically able to get ZOCOM back into their comfort zone in time for early 2062 Red Zone operations under this kind of planning paradigm. We will not have many if any Military dice to spare for Zone Armor factories in 2061, and we will likely not be able to afford them in early 2062.
With that said, I respect that Roses Too does not explicitly plan on catching us in a "worst of both worlds" scenario where we cannot complete Tendrils in time to build up a useful reserve for banking or 2062Q1 spending, but will complete it too soon to be able to use its rewards as seed corn to get our own operations flourishing and effective. Remember, for us, in the immediate aftermath of reapportionment, those 75 RpT extra would be something like 11-12% of our budget. To the rest of GDI's departments combined, they're 5% or so of the budget. Roses Too, much like Attempting To Be Done By October, is a relatively slow-Tendrils plan.
...
Steak and Tendrils raises some different issues in my book. The effort to complete the ranching domes delays work on the Stored Food targets considerably, as with Roses Too- though Roses Too compensates by sheer volume of Free dice thrown at Agriculture to do both at once. In my assessment, it is overwhelmingly likely that we'll still be throwing significant Free dice at mandatory Agriculture projects to see them done in 2061Q4 if we take Steak and Tendrils, and may miss our target unless we use extensive E-CRP to ensure we hit it cheaply and quickly.
I think that Steak and Tendrils, if successful, will find the Zone Defender revision (thrown in as a move in the direction of a power armor rollout in late 2061 to benefit ZOCOM, presumably) to be less helpful than expected. Because this plan only makes six dice of progress on our mandatory Military plan goals, and we have 17 Military dice worth of goals left, even if everything rolls okay, which we can't count on. At this rate, we'll still have several dice worth of mandatory Military projects like some combination of OSRCT, ASAT, and the Newark yard left to roll in Q4. There will not be room to build Zone Armor factories in Q3-Q4 and there will probably not be money to do more than a little of it in early 2062.
Speaking of having money... Steak and Tendrils as of this writing sets us up for the "worst of both worlds" scenario I just described. Unlikely to complete the tendrils project in time to get a 200 R cash reserve fund, very likely to complete it in time to lose the steady 75 RpT income stream we'd get from finishing it in 2062Q1 or later. To address this, Derpmind said she was planning to shuffle dice to put an eighth die on the tendrils. I hope she does. As of this writing she appears not to have done so, and I'm sure she's otherwise occupied and planning to get around to it. I gather she dislikes being pinged about these things so I'm not doing that. It would somewhat address my concerns if she did that reshuffle, because then at least we'd have a 75% chance instead of a 33% chance of getting the 200 R "first prize" for working hard to finish the tendril rollout. Without the reshuffle, there is too much risk of getting the 100 R "second prize" or even the 0 R "last place" and having nothing to help fund our operations from the project.
...
With that said.
I cannot emphasize this enough, but if we want to have Zone Armor coming off of assembly lines in significant quantity during 2061, we must continue to spend Free dice on the military. There is not enough wiggle room in the Plan otherwise. We need to roll 17+ Military dice in the next three turns just to hit mandatory targets, over and above any non-mandatory projects like Bogatyr research, the Defender revision, the Seattle yard, or anything else.
Seventeen mandatory dice if things go well. More likely, 3-4 more than that. Plus things like Bogatyr that both frontrunning plans already include.
Realistically, we can make this happen in one of two ways. We can throw 9-10 dice at the military now, as Attempting To Be Done By October and its variants do, and then have enough options to be flexible in Q3 and Q4, or we can throw 6-7 dice at the military now, as Steak and Tendrils and Roses Too do, and then not have enough options or time barring extremely aggressive military Free dice spending in the next two turns that may conflict with efforts to get mandatory Agriculture and Orbital projects done on time.
If you want to have Ground Force Zone Armor coming off assembly lines in 2061, and you don't have a lucky four-leaf clover to bless our dice, do not vote for plans that spend no Free dice on the military. Even though Attempting To Be Done By October does not contain direct power armor spending, it positions us for power armor spending in a way the competing plans cannot do.
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