ConfusedCanuck
Where did it all go wrong?
- Location
- Neverland
[X] Plan Security, Navy, Armor and Talons
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Simon, did you not see my earlier post about dice efficiency? We waited 16 turns in order to save 2.5 dice. Two. Point. Five. Literally ten IRL months to save just a very small amount of dice. If your patience is wearing too damn thin to wait any longer, then doing the Bay and the Leopard is pointless. Why wait two or three more turns? Just switch to doing Columbia immediately:
-[] GDSS Columbia (Phase 1+2+3) 0/580 6 dice 120R 15% (Phase 1+2 100%)
And as for why I'd switch a die from the Leopard to the Bay? Because I go for those 9% chances. And the 4% chances. And even the 2% chances sometimes. Those do pay off, if we keep doing them when possible. But if we never go for the long shots, then that doesn't happen. And yes, often we're given mechanical or narrative reasons to rush certain projects faster. But your reason for rushing to the Columbia is simply because you want it done a turn faster, not because of any narrative or mechanical need. So why wait? Spend those virtual 2.5 dice immediately and you can get the Columbia's first two phases done in one turn instead of waiting three. It'll look good, get us more +PS for Reallocation, and all it'll cost is a few extra dice that I guess no one cared about anyways.
-[] GDSS Columbia (Phase 1+2+3) 0/580 6 dice 120R 15% (Phase 1+2 100%)
And as for why I'd switch a die from the Leopard to the Bay? Because I go for those 9% chances. And the 4% chances. And even the 2% chances sometimes. Those do pay off, if we keep doing them when possible. But if we never go for the long shots, then that doesn't happen. And yes, often we're given mechanical or narrative reasons to rush certain projects faster. But your reason for rushing to the Columbia is simply because you want it done a turn faster, not because of any narrative or mechanical need. So why wait? Spend those virtual 2.5 dice immediately and you can get the Columbia's first two phases done in one turn instead of waiting three. It'll look good, get us more +PS for Reallocation, and all it'll cost is a few extra dice that I guess no one cared about anyways.
Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
[X] Plan Savings and Tech
[X] Plan Refugees and Research
[X] Plan Refugees and Research
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I don't think a security review is desirable at this time, and I definitely don't think tarberry development is desirable at this time. It's going to be a way to efficiently produce hydrocarbon fuels and feedstock from plants (e.g. more efficiently than ethanol sourced from whatever we might grow for ethanol). That's nice, but it basically boils down to "+Energy from Agriculture dice." We're going to be under a lot of pressure to continue improving the quality of people's food supply in the coming Four Year Plan, and honestly I don't think we'll find the time to do much with tarberries.
I'm not opposed to the development, even if I'd rather prioritize a luxury foods option like Vertical Farming Phase 2. But if you're doing it just FOR SCIENCE, I suggest prioritizing poulticeplants over tarberries, as I suspect we'll be more likely to learn something interesting.
I think it's a bad idea to put only one die on OSRCT. Given that this leaves us with a substantial, double-digit chance of project failure, I don't think the Space Force will count is as a "good faith effort" when we spent a lot of the other dice on optional projects that weren't Plan commitments. If it were me, I'd take the die off the plasma cannons and put it on OSRCT, if nothing else.
All in all this is a reasonably respectable plan, mind you.
If two dice on a non-mandatory Talons project this turn isn't enough to keep General Jackson, I'm pretty sure three dice won't be either.
I think your idea about which areas we're strong and weak in are an arbitrary hodge-podge. Do we "need" to keep all military branches at High confidence? No. We've never succeeded in doing that, and it's debatable whether we ever can or will. GDI's military situation is actually pretty good right now, after all. Likewise, it seems very strange that you rate "lack of tiberium silos" as a "strategic weakness" when the lack of silos has literally never hurt us during the game and could not hurt us except under very unusual circumstances. Similarly, you call our "lack of consumables" a strategic weakness when the military isn't even complaining about it.
Nod's ability to tunnel is mostly relevant on very small scales and we seem to have it mostly in check, not least because Nod can't tunnel as aggressively as they used to without hitting tiberium veins, which is admittedly bad but at least affects the enemy as much as us.
The Johannesburg myomer plant now produces only about a third of our total production and is not in any normal sense a significant weakness given that you're not listing North Boston as a weakness when it produces the overwhelming majority of our computer chips.
The Arabian Blue Zone doesn't need a MARV hub or fortress cities because it's not under danger of direct military attack; the Caravanserai has been effectively pushed into neutrality or arguably co-belligerent status alongside us. The danger is weapons of mass destruction fired at the Zone from a distance, and the counter is SADN, not MARV hubs. Especially since we can do an entire phase of SADN for about the same dice cost as a single MARV hub.
The lack of suborbital shuttles cannot reasonably be considered a 'weakness' when Nod seems incapable of exploiting it meaningfully. The Zones are well-integrated as is, and while things could be better, it is not a 'weakness' to be in a situation that is less than theoretically optimum.
I don't understand the logic of your choice of 'weaknesses' that explains why you choose some of these, and not, say, mediocre housing quality, sudden creation of a lot of new cities with minimal infrastructure and job opportunities, and a stagnant civilian economy we are only beginning to infuse with the goods and resources needed for it to thrive.
This comparison is interesting, now that I think about it.
Because you're comparing the dice cost of doing Projects C and D with the dice cost of doing projects A, B, then C and D, as if Projects A and B have no purpose or value except insofar as they accelerate C and D.
I don't agree with that philosophy. We're going to want to build the station bay anyway in the long run. Given that we do, it is better to build it sooner rather than later, so we can enjoy greater effects from it. The Leopard II yard falls into the same category. There's no reasonable scenario where it's 2070 and we haven't built it, so why not get it over with sooner and reap some reward?
So saying "A+B->C+D has a total cost of only 2.5 dice less than C+D, therefore any deviation from optimal minimum dice expenditure, however slight, defeats the purpose of doing A+B at all" seems inaccurate to me.
Because the proper comparison is "A+B->C+D has a total cost of about twelve dice less than C+D->A+B, and we're going to want to do all projects A through D eventually anyway." At which point we're still netting a considerable advantage to ourselves if we somehow "slip up" and miss that one-in-four (say) chance of getting lucky and completing Project B with four dice rather than five.
...
While we're at it, I don't think it's even accurate to say that we "waited 16 turns" for this reason. It was for a number of reasons:
1) Because the choice to finish Philadelphia instead of work on Columbia was motivated by other considerations- such as the part where it gave us +1 Orbital die, without which finishing stuff would take even longer. And finishing Philadelphia was a big part of the delay right there.
2) A large further part of the delay was due to us committing to build a bunch of moon mines. We have good reason to not regret those, because if it weren't for the RpT from said mines, we probably wouldn't even be talking about "so, what space stations do you want to build in 2062Q1," because we might very well simply not have the budget to activate all our Orbital dice.
3) My actual point is that we have spent all this time building infrastructure to make the construction of Columbia and Shala as quick, easy, and well-funded as possible. We're ready. People have been wanting us to do it for a long time. I consider this to be sufficient reason to commit slight resources (e.g., the sacrifice of, statistically speaking, 0.25 Orbital dice) to a modest acceleration of the project. However, I am not willing to write off eight or twelve dice worth of benefits from doing Projects A and B before C and D, when Projects A and B will still need doing eventually.
Sometimes I do the same. Sometimes I don't. It's situational for me rather than axiomatic, and it depends on whether there are other factors imposing some degree of time pressure.
For instance, you say there's no mechanical or narrative reason to want to start Columbia a quarter faster... But the narrative has been telling us for in-game years that Columbia is a popular and greatly desired project. Of course there's a narrative reason to start it faster, if the cost is reasonable. Some costs would be; other costs would not.
This isn't a case of "I guess Simon doesn't care anyway, whatever." This is a case of Simon sharing your priorities but also having some additional priorities that, in certain edge cases, can modify the first set of priorities.
@Ithillid, write-in for the Political Reform option: "Starting in 2064, Treasury's allocation is changed to yearly deductions of a fixed sum, determined at the start of each 4YP." Valid?
Also, an oddball idea: Vegetarian blood sausage. That is, fungus bars, spiced with blood harvested from cattle and the like, especially breeding studs that otherwise wouldn't directly contribute to food output. Propably modifies the dairy farms, may or may not have mechanical effects beyond the fluff of getting more pseudo-meat on the table.
Lastly, I very much hope our vertical farms include rabbits raised for meat and wool, given they're just about perfect for that.
Also, an oddball idea: Vegetarian blood sausage. That is, fungus bars, spiced with blood harvested from cattle and the like, especially breeding studs that otherwise wouldn't directly contribute to food output. Propably modifies the dairy farms, may or may not have mechanical effects beyond the fluff of getting more pseudo-meat on the table.
Lastly, I very much hope our vertical farms include rabbits raised for meat and wool, given they're just about perfect for that.
Last edited:
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The don't. The Leopard II has a minor discount to Lunar Mines, a flat -5 progress to each phase. But aside from that maybe giving some kind of narrative bonus, that's it. And the Station Bay? It really doesn't do anything besides the discount. Even the Enterprise Bay vote described it as:
So back when we decided to complete the Enterprise before Columbia or Shala, the entire point was to save a tiny number of dice. That advantage largely disappears the moment you overspend even one or two dice.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Simon I don't have the time right now to reply to the rest of you criticisms but housing quality is in there under Operational Weaknesses:
As for minimal infrastructure, job opportunities and a stagnant civilian economy? Those aren't weaknesses because NOD is worse than us in all of those things on average and we have In-Ops for the above average.
[X] Plan Attempting To Have Banks In Chicago with light combat lasers
My vote, because we don't need vertical farms yet, but our units could always use more pew-pew PD.
EDIT:
[X] Plan Attempting To Have Banks In Chicago
My vote, because we don't need vertical farms yet, but our units could always use more pew-pew PD.
EDIT:
[X] Plan Attempting To Have Banks In Chicago
Last edited:
Personally, I don't consider 2-9% chances as even viable long shots. They're more like Hail Mary passes that you're really really hoping is that once in a blue moon and actually completes. I might go for 20-30% or higher as a viable long shot completion, and 50%+ I'm good with going for. But a going for turning a 98% fail rate for completion to 90% fail rate? Nah.
Also, I think I prefer the potential narrative effects of funding them such that they're likely to complete same turn, rather than "max efficiency."
--
On a different topic, I finally got around to updating my "Mammoth 27" omake to bring the vehicle designations in line with my current style guide, added a post date that puts it a week-ish before Steel Vanguard kicked off, and added a "top rate comment" by a former Mammoth Mk II/III crewman that 'corrects' the "Block 0" section. Also, GDI Online's comment sections might be really generous with character limits? I dunno if this comment would be possible on some current comment sections.
If you want to just see the main new bit added:
Also, I think I prefer the potential narrative effects of funding them such that they're likely to complete same turn, rather than "max efficiency."
--
On a different topic, I finally got around to updating my "Mammoth 27" omake to bring the vehicle designations in line with my current style guide, added a post date that puts it a week-ish before Steel Vanguard kicked off, and added a "top rate comment" by a former Mammoth Mk II/III crewman that 'corrects' the "Block 0" section. Also, GDI Online's comment sections might be really generous with character limits? I dunno if this comment would be possible on some current comment sections.
If you want to just see the main new bit added:
HeavyMetal3045
Before I get started, I did look up what kind of easily available information was around on the Mammoth Mk III development. Turns out, not a lot. Mostly press releases. So I'm going from the angle that you don't quite realize what's involved in military vehicle development, particularly with the Mammoth Mk III.
GDI military development can be broken up into two general categories and four phases. First category is Development, and consists of the design phase and the prototype/testing phase. Design figures out what's needed and comes up with the design. A small number of prototypes are then built and tested on some Proving Grounds. At this point, the entire project could stop if the testing results are bad enough and it's doubtful changes to solve them. Otherwise, we might have a series of changes and prototypes to work out the issues. The second category is Deployment, and consists of LRIP and Full Scale Production phases. LRIP stands for Low Rate Initial Production. With this, GDI has a factory or two built and a few hundred vehicles built with them in order to both test the building process to work kinks out, and to get enough vehicles to kit out a unit or two for end user testing. If the testing works out well enough, additional factories are built in order to handle the production needs of the military and full scale production starts. If it doesn't, well, the final phase doesn't happen.
At the time I was in service, Development was one funding request, LRIP was a second, and Production was a third. Buddies still in service indicate that LRIP and Production have merged into a single Deployment program, but it's apparently worked out since everyone involved has fairly recent combat experience to draw on when working on designs before anything gets to potential end users. Also, a lot of the design work goes on without Treasury funding, so the Development program is more final design work and prototype testing. Cheaper Treasury request, if nothing else. I wonder if that was the case back with the Mk III. Note - "Block 0" doesn't really exist as an official designation. The LRIP version is simply "LRIP" on the end and Block 1 is the production version regardless of how few changes are made from LRIP to Production (at the time and to now). So "Mammoth Mk III (LRIP)" would be more accurate.
As I understand it, a Steel Talons unit was the first unit to get them, and I'm sure that was an… interesting experience for all involved. What my unit got was probably a YHBT-5-1. The lack of a block designation plays merry hell with designating prototype variants. The main difference between the -1 and the original (officially, I don't think they differentiated between the versions; everything LRIP was HBT-5) was tweaks and improvements to the power pack, and some tweaks to suspension. Given that LRIP and Production were different Treasury programs, a lot of work was done on the LRIP program funding or by the Steel Talons before the Production program was funded. Why the delay? Above my pay grade. Given the budget cuts to the military in that time frame, could simply be that was when they freed up funding to continue the roll-out, or they were giving the Steel Talons time to suss out the issues so Production would go faster.
In any case, in mid 2041 we got 4-5 new Mammoth Mk IIIs. I believe this version was largely based on further Steel Talons modifications plus all new power pack and suspension, and it was designated XHBT-5A, so was likely to become the production model. The rear track units shifting rear was definitely from the Steel Talons's YHBT-5-2 version to the best of my knowledge. They were a dream to use in comparison to the LRIP versions we initially had. Not sure I want to know what the original version the Talons' got was like. By the end of the year, all of our LRIP HBT-5s were gone and we had a full supply of HBT-5A. Any LRIP Mk IIIs would've been relegated to training units, overhauled into Block 1 configurations, or simply put into reserve storage. 2043 was when the last Mammoth Mk II unit transitioned to the Mk III Block 1.
My biggest regret was that I never got to test or crew an (X)HBT-5B. Railguns on a Mammoth Mk II were amazing, and I wish I could've gotten the chance to put them to use in a Mk III. Not a big enough regret to sign up again though. Got more important things to take care of these days.
Before I get started, I did look up what kind of easily available information was around on the Mammoth Mk III development. Turns out, not a lot. Mostly press releases. So I'm going from the angle that you don't quite realize what's involved in military vehicle development, particularly with the Mammoth Mk III.
GDI military development can be broken up into two general categories and four phases. First category is Development, and consists of the design phase and the prototype/testing phase. Design figures out what's needed and comes up with the design. A small number of prototypes are then built and tested on some Proving Grounds. At this point, the entire project could stop if the testing results are bad enough and it's doubtful changes to solve them. Otherwise, we might have a series of changes and prototypes to work out the issues. The second category is Deployment, and consists of LRIP and Full Scale Production phases. LRIP stands for Low Rate Initial Production. With this, GDI has a factory or two built and a few hundred vehicles built with them in order to both test the building process to work kinks out, and to get enough vehicles to kit out a unit or two for end user testing. If the testing works out well enough, additional factories are built in order to handle the production needs of the military and full scale production starts. If it doesn't, well, the final phase doesn't happen.
At the time I was in service, Development was one funding request, LRIP was a second, and Production was a third. Buddies still in service indicate that LRIP and Production have merged into a single Deployment program, but it's apparently worked out since everyone involved has fairly recent combat experience to draw on when working on designs before anything gets to potential end users. Also, a lot of the design work goes on without Treasury funding, so the Development program is more final design work and prototype testing. Cheaper Treasury request, if nothing else. I wonder if that was the case back with the Mk III. Note - "Block 0" doesn't really exist as an official designation. The LRIP version is simply "LRIP" on the end and Block 1 is the production version regardless of how few changes are made from LRIP to Production (at the time and to now). So "Mammoth Mk III (LRIP)" would be more accurate.
As I understand it, a Steel Talons unit was the first unit to get them, and I'm sure that was an… interesting experience for all involved. What my unit got was probably a YHBT-5-1. The lack of a block designation plays merry hell with designating prototype variants. The main difference between the -1 and the original (officially, I don't think they differentiated between the versions; everything LRIP was HBT-5) was tweaks and improvements to the power pack, and some tweaks to suspension. Given that LRIP and Production were different Treasury programs, a lot of work was done on the LRIP program funding or by the Steel Talons before the Production program was funded. Why the delay? Above my pay grade. Given the budget cuts to the military in that time frame, could simply be that was when they freed up funding to continue the roll-out, or they were giving the Steel Talons time to suss out the issues so Production would go faster.
In any case, in mid 2041 we got 4-5 new Mammoth Mk IIIs. I believe this version was largely based on further Steel Talons modifications plus all new power pack and suspension, and it was designated XHBT-5A, so was likely to become the production model. The rear track units shifting rear was definitely from the Steel Talons's YHBT-5-2 version to the best of my knowledge. They were a dream to use in comparison to the LRIP versions we initially had. Not sure I want to know what the original version the Talons' got was like. By the end of the year, all of our LRIP HBT-5s were gone and we had a full supply of HBT-5A. Any LRIP Mk IIIs would've been relegated to training units, overhauled into Block 1 configurations, or simply put into reserve storage. 2043 was when the last Mammoth Mk II unit transitioned to the Mk III Block 1.
My biggest regret was that I never got to test or crew an (X)HBT-5B. Railguns on a Mammoth Mk II were amazing, and I wish I could've gotten the chance to put them to use in a Mk III. Not a big enough regret to sign up again though. Got more important things to take care of these days.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Almost done
So, addressing this first, because I think that doing Chicago now is actually more of a mistake than many people are realizing.
2) From the current Apartment description: "With many of the urban cores now furnished with a pod of apartment buildings, expanding them will still be noticeably logistics expensive..." This suggests some sort of change, and also problems with actually providing transport to said apartments. With 2 more phases of Apartments, we'll be at +18 Logistics, and the major source of Logistics is... Infrastructure. It's just as "probably fine" as the Capital Goods situation.
3) 6 Capital Goods for 550 progress is... not great. It's okay when you add in everything else that Chicago adds, but not amazing.
4) We have a ~900 point Refining buffer. Asking for more now, when we'd have to do it later anyway, is absurd.
5) We're committed to doing the project sometime in the next 4 years. Doing it now, when we have an *urgent* issue that can only be addressed by using Infrastructure dice, is problematic.
6) We have a *fuckton* of "unfinished business" projects. Hmmm. Sounds like it's time to go through again and dust off Plan FIFO.
Really. I believe that trying to work on Chicago right now is a mistake, that will play into the hands of Initiative First and the anti-government-control factions of the FMP. And, likely, result in our losing out on stealing population from Nod that we otherwise would be able to, if we try to ensure that the refugees get decent housing.
1: Chicago. See above.
2: Artificial wood seems like a "develop more Consumer Goods" tech, which is not bad, but since we're at +72 on that, I'd prefer the isolinear peripherals project. It is cheaper though, so not a major complaint.
3: I think that you're underestimating the use of a security review for Agriculture, both actual need and perception-based due to the old issues with Nod sabotage.
4: Putting Erewhon on studying Venusian Tiberium may not be mechanically optimal (over Claws), but it sounds like it will result in hilarity, so I'm good with it.
5: Not enough dice on Orbital. SPAAAAACE!
6: I think overkilling ASAT is a mistake, but only because Phase 5 isn't something I think we'll be working on for a year or two. Opportunity cost compared to doing other things like the improved Sonic weaponry.
7: I see the argument for Banking, although I think it's probably not nearly as urgent now that we boosted the Grants a lot.
8: Seo got bonked by Granger when he ranted about Initiative First, remember? (Q1 2058 Results, "Personal Musings" section, second paragraph.) Yes, it's not in the plan, but still. *bonk*
Comments:
1: Urban Metros and Apartments are good - we need to put work into expanding all our cities.
2: Still no Agriculture security review. We'll see how many pigs we lose to the black market sometime later, I guess.
3: Offensive Navy ships won't be going away immediately, and neither will Tali.
4: see above for commentary on ASAT, banking, and another bonk for the IF not-actually-a-thing.
1: Our "shitty housing" portion of the housing buffer is pretty thick, yes- but those are mostly "2-room apartment for whole family" commieblocks, or "literally a bunker under an artillery battery" fortress towns. We're getting to the point where IF activists can point to YZ-natives being put in ghettos.
2) From the current Apartment description: "With many of the urban cores now furnished with a pod of apartment buildings, expanding them will still be noticeably logistics expensive..." This suggests some sort of change, and also problems with actually providing transport to said apartments. With 2 more phases of Apartments, we'll be at +18 Logistics, and the major source of Logistics is... Infrastructure. It's just as "probably fine" as the Capital Goods situation.
3) 6 Capital Goods for 550 progress is... not great. It's okay when you add in everything else that Chicago adds, but not amazing.
4) We have a ~900 point Refining buffer. Asking for more now, when we'd have to do it later anyway, is absurd.
5) We're committed to doing the project sometime in the next 4 years. Doing it now, when we have an *urgent* issue that can only be addressed by using Infrastructure dice, is problematic.
6) We have a *fuckton* of "unfinished business" projects. Hmmm. Sounds like it's time to go through again and dust off Plan FIFO.
Really. I believe that trying to work on Chicago right now is a mistake, that will play into the hands of Initiative First and the anti-government-control factions of the FMP. And, likely, result in our losing out on stealing population from Nod that we otherwise would be able to, if we try to ensure that the refugees get decent housing.
My comments/complaints:
1: Chicago. See above.
2: Artificial wood seems like a "develop more Consumer Goods" tech, which is not bad, but since we're at +72 on that, I'd prefer the isolinear peripherals project. It is cheaper though, so not a major complaint.
3: I think that you're underestimating the use of a security review for Agriculture, both actual need and perception-based due to the old issues with Nod sabotage.
4: Putting Erewhon on studying Venusian Tiberium may not be mechanically optimal (over Claws), but it sounds like it will result in hilarity, so I'm good with it.
5: Not enough dice on Orbital. SPAAAAACE!
6: I think overkilling ASAT is a mistake, but only because Phase 5 isn't something I think we'll be working on for a year or two. Opportunity cost compared to doing other things like the improved Sonic weaponry.
7: I see the argument for Banking, although I think it's probably not nearly as urgent now that we boosted the Grants a lot.
8: Seo got bonked by Granger when he ranted about Initiative First, remember? (Q1 2058 Results, "Personal Musings" section, second paragraph.) Yes, it's not in the plan, but still. *bonk*
This one is better, aside from putting too many free dice into Military - they really don't need anything like that much investment, that quickly. Tali isn't going to leave immediately if we don't put a bunch of dice into Steel Talons - that's a long-term warning. (I think she's wanting to see a Plan commitment to increased ST funding during Reallocation.)
Comments:
1: Urban Metros and Apartments are good - we need to put work into expanding all our cities.
2: Still no Agriculture security review. We'll see how many pigs we lose to the black market sometime later, I guess.
3: Offensive Navy ships won't be going away immediately, and neither will Tali.
4: see above for commentary on ASAT, banking, and another bonk for the IF not-actually-a-thing.
It's chonky, overarmed, and ready to ruin Nod's day. Just what we expect from Steel Talons, and I love it.Almost done
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
[X] Plan Attempting To Have Banks In Chicago
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
GDI isn't going to somehow "kill" or "replace" Open Hand or any other religion. It's not actually providing "answers to questions that faiths often struggle with providing". The government being kinda socialist isn't some kind of mortal blow to Open Hand/Nod philosophy, or any religion. If anything, it's easier to see our current determined socialist streak as an affirmation and confirmation of those beliefs. But sure, whatever, you do you.
[X]Plan Save Moneys, with more SCIENCE!
[X] Plan Microfusion Dreams, Fleet Memes
Last edited:
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Oh God, I would mash that button so hard. Just so we could plan around it and stabilize things.
I'm pretty sure that if the sausage contains blood from animals, it's not vegetarian as far as most vegetarians are concerned.
Now, it may be ethically sourced insofar as no animals suffered lasting harm because you're not drinking more of their blood than their iron-rich diet can support. But it's not vegetarian.
I'm not sure that'd be classed as "dairy farms."
Broadly speaking, raising rabbits sounds a good deal like raising chickens- they're small, they breed quickly, et cetera. We know our existing Vertical Farming projects raise chickens, mainly for eggs, so I imagine they could extend that to rabbits easily enough.
The Leopard II project accelerates lunar projects, not just lunar mines. We have a lot of probable future lunar projects ahead of us, in the form of moon base construction, construction of refineries on the moon to eventually take some of the load off orbital stations like Enterprise, possibly mounting defensive systems on the moon in case of Visitor attack, and so on.
More generally, you're implicitly suggesting that we would/should just... never upgrade or change the Leopard design. Never build a new factory to make a higher-performance shuttlecraft. Because it isn't worth it.
I don't think that's a good approach. Sooner or later, we would want an upgraded and improved shuttlecraft. If the improved shuttle is already available, it would be unwise to keep putting off the project forever and missing opportunities to benefit from it over and over
The discount doesn't vanish when we finish the last of the Big Four. There are a lot of other space station projects out there. We've only seen some of them hinted, but they're there. Thus, we would have an incentive to build the station bay anyway, because it lets us build more stations, and we're not done building stations when we finish the big two from this plan.
Your analysis of the dice savings associated with the Leopard II yard and the station bay doesn't make sense to me. Unless I base it on the idea that our entire space program just- stops- as soon as we complete the Big Four, such that infrastructure created to build the Big Four is of no value afterwards, and there is never any future need for similar infrastructure on any future projects.
Without that "there is no tomorrow after Shala Phase 5" accounting conceit, the dice savings stops being as tiny as you make it out to be.
In fairness, you're right. I missed that.
...But now you're contradicting yourself.
If it's not a weakness unless Nod is better at it than we are, why is our rail network a weakness? We haven't gotten any narrative cues that the lack of railroads is directly causing major problems, and Nod's territory is just as split up and disrupted as ours if not more so. What makes you think that their transportation system is better to the point where it's our "operational weakness," but not theirs?
Actually we kinda do need vertical farms or something like them.
See, the problem is that we're going to be under pressure to improve food quality next Plan- this has been pretty heavily foreshadowed and set up. You can tell options that do that because they're farming related but provide Consumer Goods. Our options that provide improved food or quasi-food quality next Plan are thus:
Vertical Farming Phase 2+
Dairy Ranches Phase 1-3
Wadmalaw Kudzu Phase 3
Caffeinated kudzu is a good boost, but there's only one phase left as far as we know.
Dairy ranches are great, but there's a problem with them: they turn -3 Food into +6 Consumer Goods per phase. We have a +17 Food surplus, we do NOT want to go all the way down to +0 Food or even +10 if we can help it, and we have refugees eating more food every turn with no clear idea of when that's going to come to a stop. So we don't actually have unlimited wiggle room to build the dairy ranches, until and unless we build more +Food options.
That leaves vertical farming, which is lovely in that it produces surpluses of both Consumer Goods and Food. It just straightforwardly feeds people, while also feeding them good enough quality food that their diet increases on net. Given the situation we're in right now, that's actually pretty sweet.
So the same impetus that drove us to prioritize Ranching Domes in Q2 should probably be pushing us towards Vertical Farms right now. People want a plateful of turkey bacon and scrambled eggs. They don't want a plateful of inedible tarberries, and we don't really need the tarberries.
(1, 2, 7) You're kind of talking about this as if we haven't been engaged in intensive apartment construction
Just for reference, we are now discussing whether to begin (and rapidly complete) our ninth phase of apartments. It is currently 2061Q4. One year ago, in 2060Q4, we were on Phase Two of apartments. Over the course of that year, we have constructed a total of eight phases of medium/high-quality housing, plus a few points from the Bureau of Arcologies.
We've brought in -40 Housing worth of refugees, and built about +50 Housing worth of... housing. Pretty good housing, too. We are not ethically bound to continue prioritizing Housing at all costs when we have managed to build so much housing so fast. And I mean fast. So fast that we've improved average housing quality during a year-long period of warfare and massive refugee influxes to the tune of a double digit percentage of our population. Let me just repeat that.
GDI citizens, including the immigrants, have on average more and better housing conditions now than they did a year ago, in spite of all the normal things that would naively lead us to expect exactly the opposite to happen.
Building literally no Housing for a turn will just revert us to the kind of indicator levels we had in 2060Q4, which while not ideal, were by no means disastrous. No disaster will befall us if we take a single quarter to prioritize something else. I don't think it'll be a problem. I don't think it'll make things significantly worse in any way that they would not already have become worse anyway. I don't think us building another two phases of apartments in a hurry now and not later would make that much difference.
...
(3, 4) I agree that the refining cap doesn't pressingly need to be higher right now, I threw that in as speculation. However, again, +6 Capital Goods for 550 Progress, while not great, is nothing to sneeze at. All the genuinely more efficient options still open to us are Heavy Industry megaprojects of a type we cannot hope to complete in less than two turns even with meme plan levels of effort.
1) Chicago! See above.My comments/complaints:
1: Chicago. See above.
2: Artificial wood seems like a "develop more Consumer Goods" tech, which is not bad, but since we're at +72 on that, I'd prefer the isolinear peripherals project. It is cheaper though, so not a major complaint.
3: I think that you're underestimating the use of a security review for Agriculture, both actual need and perception-based due to the old issues with Nod sabotage.
4: Putting Erewhon on studying Venusian Tiberium may not be mechanically optimal (over Claws), but it sounds like it will result in hilarity, so I'm good with it.
5: Not enough dice on Orbital. SPAAAAACE!
6: I think overkilling ASAT is a mistake, but only because Phase 5 isn't something I think we'll be working on for a year or two. Opportunity cost compared to doing other things like the improved Sonic weaponry.
7: I see the argument for Banking, although I think it's probably not nearly as urgent now that we boosted the Grants a lot.
8: Seo got bonked by Granger when he ranted about Initiative First, remember? (Q1 2058 Results, "Personal Musings" section, second paragraph.) Yes, it's not in the plan, but still. *bonk*
2) Acknowledged. This is a valid point of difference. I anticipate Isolinear Peripherals unfolding into a big swoopy project we won't have time for immediately, and I don't really have two Light Industry dice to spare to finish it this turn anyway, so I went for the one-die project rather than the two-die project.
3) The old sabotage was over a decade ago, the security review will happen soon anyway, I'm not saying nothing can go wrong but the tail end of a plan isn't a great time to do security reviews anyway, and I'm still trying to treat the Milk and Honey movement like a thing that exists by continuing to steadily improve food quality despite the refugee influx.
4) Thanks.
5) Conceded.
6) Eh, fair. A large part of my determination on that subject is that ASAT Phase 4 isn't just a promise we made as a deal, it was baked into the Plan. We didn't even get a vote on it. I'm pretty sure someone out there takes it dead seriously and is going to be pissed, or at least going to spend a lot of time shitting on the Treasury's reputation for delivering on its promises, if we don't finish it.
7) Hopefully, but the banking reforms have the potential to become self-sustaining and self-expanding a la fractional reserves.
8) I accept the bonk. Nevertheless, Hideo Ozawa can go play hopscotch in a Yellow Zone minefield.
I don't actually know when the amphibious assault ships go away, but if the Navy is making passive-aggressive remarks about how unfunded they are, I want to respond now, not get surprised later.
- Location
- USA
While I agree, in general, we have repeatedly been told that there are other new techs and bonuses gated behind the experimental agriculture stuff.
We don't need them right now. Absolutely agree.
But we absolutely should do them at some point. Maybe even shave off a dice each plan dedicated to moving one of them to completion or something. Not sure.
But I'm certain there are worthwhile effects from the 4 experimental plants even if it just looks like +1cap good or whatever.
NHO
Dumb is a state of existence
- Location
- ᓚᘏᗢ
Ye gods. This thing will totally teabag an Avatar warmech it shot down.Dududududududuu
The first section, I feel, partially misses my point. I'm not saying that we're ethically bound to continue building housing despite having built a lot - I'm saying that the conditions are such that ethics, politics, and practicality mean we should continue to build decent+ quality housing because we still have a lot of people still living in shitty housing, even though the situation is better than it was. Stopping for a turn won't be disastrous, but this particular turn is kinda the worst one to stop on, because of the politics of Reallocation. Yes, we have 10 pops less living in low-quality housing than this time last year, but that just shows how bad the situation was before. As for the Capital Goods, that would be more of an argument if we weren't sitting on a pretty comfortable surplus for the year or so I anticipate before we complete Nuuk 4.
Why is the tail end of a plan when we are explicitly trying to save up a reserve, a bad time to do security reviews?
And yes, Ozawa can play minefield hopscotch... the problem is dismissing the tens of thousands of voters (close to 10% of Parliament, even if their share of the electorate is probably shrinking) who follow him, as well.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Different operational weakness:
We are about to go into Red Zone Offensives hard and that means attacking the Australian Red Zone which we don't yet have enough Rail to.
So we literally don't have the Logistics network for our Tiberium Harvesting done yet. How is that not an operational weakness?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I don't mind researching them. We can see what that does. I just recommend prioritizing poulticeplants over tarberries, and want to remind everyone that we are definitely not out of the woods when it comes to having Agriculture Plan goals we need to find ways to fulfill in the coming Plan.
Look, we've taken something like +50 population/housing units of refugees
At this point, everyone living in "shitty housing" either chooses to live there preferentially for some reason (say, great commute to work, they love the neighborhood, or they just don't give a shit), or is a refugee who arrived on GDI soil within the past year.
I'm not saying the situation is fine if we never do anything about it again, but now? It's fine. We're in a great position to say that we worked really hard to build housing and we have and we intend to build more, and nobody's gonna doubt us after we slammed out +48 Housing worth of apartments in a year.
Electric cars. -2. Tiberium claws. -2. Station bay. -1. Hospitals. -1. Assorted war factories. -1, -5 total, -2, -2 more if we do an amphib shipyard. X stages of vein mines. Easily -6 to -10.
I could easily run through 20 Capital Goods in the next year or so and barely even be trying. AEVAs (which would be quite nice) would eat more. And through it all, we need to try to keep our Capital Goods surplus up well above zero, because until we finish filling the stockpile (size mandated by Parliament, apparently), that -5 flow into the civilian economy that the FMP managed to swing is all said civilian economy gets.
Guess I'll just play to the other 85% of the voters, then.
...
As to your question about the security reviews... Well, because I think an even better time to do security reviews is in 2062 when it means we don't need to spend that reserve. We've done that before; it works fine.
Devil's advocacy here, but we airlift out the tiberium from a lot of our glacier mines, because maintaining overland routes through Red Zones is hard and involves taking the tiberium through Nod territory overland in a lot of cases.
If we can manage air lifts of tiberium out of a MARV hub around the site of Genoa, Italy, or a bunch of glacier mines on the Italian peninsula... we can manage without dedicated rail lines to the mining sites in the Australian outback.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have such rail lines, but listing it as a big deal in the same breath as, say, Nod's ability to throw nukes at us for lack of SADN... no. Just no.
Because Nod isn't in a position to even attempt that type of harvesting, despite much better Red Zone access than us? Again, the problem I have here isn't with you saying "this is a thing we should work on." It's that you label this as a list of "weaknesses" with the implication that you have objective criteria for what does and does not constitute weakness.
But your criteria aren't consistent. X isn't a weakness because we're better at it than Nod anyway. Y is a weakness even though we're doing okay, no one's gotten hurt or anything, and Nod can't do it at all!
I'd feel more intellectually honest about it if you would just make a list of "problems we need to solve, in descending order of priority." Because "we're good at this, but not as good as we'd like" isn't a weakness, but is definitely a problem. Likewise, "this is a problem GDI already solves and is functional in spite of, but could do better at" is not a weakness, but can be a problem.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
No Simon. I'm tired, I need to write and I still recall the whole Super Glaciers being dependent on having Rail connections and otherwise being just ordinary Glaciers thing.
So @Ithillid a question for you that you probably already answered at least once:
Do we need Rail connections to be able to do Super Glaciers instead of ordinary Glaciers?
Super Glaciers are dependent on doing the Red Zone Border Offensives projects first, not on rail connections. Rail connections would likely help reduce/offset Logistics costs, but they have never been said to be essential.
- Location
- USA
The only direct mention of rails I can recall as far as red zones is that another phase would secure our connection to the Australian one.
In addition to ensuring military supply lines.
In addition to ensuring military supply lines.
If that is what you want to vote for I would suggest you put your vote down so it can be counted properly.