- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The US Navy is trying more or less this approach and it has limits.
It has limits especially if the underlying hull design is something that might reasonably be called a "monitor," that is to say, well protected, slow, and defended in large part by having a low target profile that potentially verges on "semi-submersible."
i'd rather have the amphibious assault ships, which are much more of a game-changing asset.
Nod doesn't do a lot of oceangoing convoy operations. Their industry tends to be more distributed and uses more advanced (but more polluting) methods to extract and make stuff from tiberium. What commerce they do have seems to travel in giant cargo submarines that are difficult to keep track of.
More generally, remember that Nod was unable to cut our supply lines across the oceans in the recent war, despite having every reason to do so. We are the ones who can feel secure putting our only really major computer chip foundry in one Blue Zone and shipping the products all over the world.
I think they take our navy a lot more seriously than you think. Even their specialist naval warlord only manages to inflict moderate damage while fighting a fleet that is itself only a fraction of our total sea power.
Yes. And if we're seriously trying to push our tiberium mining income, with a meme plan level "seven plus seven" dice commitment, the first 280 R of that goes to tiberium alone, plus 5-10 R for each die we spend on a Red Zone operation instead of vein mining. Figure 300 R, and we're left with a discretionary budget of 220 R (low end, low reserve and 20% GDP) to 590 R (high end, high reserve and 30% GDP). Theoretically more if we can cast off some line-items.
If we commit to spending the 100 R from space mining on Orbital, which we probably should if we don't want Starbound to grumble about defeating the purpose of the bill they worked hard to pass...
Well, that leaves us with between 120 R and 490 R to spend on all categories apart from Tiberium/Free and Orbital. Assuming we don't do any spinoff bureaus or otherwise gain/lose any dice this turn, by my count that's 30 dice not counting Bureaucracy.
...
At the low end (low reserve, 20% GDP), we have an average of 4 R per die, which means a LOT of dice being left fallow (realistically including Orbital, so things aren't quite that hopeless).
At the high end (high reserve, 30% GDP), we have an average of 16 R/die, which is downright comfortable, when you think about it.
So again, there is a very wide range of places we can be standing in at the start of 2062Q1, and I strongly recommend that we avoid making any irreversible spending commitments now that will bind us then.
