Considering there is space to mark which ten/seven/whatever, that seems to be the case.
I think that list is just there so that we know which items are even on the list, personally. If Ithillid tells me that I need to pick ten techs in specific, I'll pick ten techs in specific, or something. Otherwise, I'd rather not be pinned down if we don't have to.
Eh, if their response to the government saying no to segregationists is to become terrorists, then I don't really feel like that make me more motivated to give them additional power and influence so that they can demand more in the next round.
I think what happens is that
half the party (maybe not literally exactly half) become terrorists, if we're clearly not even interested in granting
non-segregationist demands like "bld fort plz," or for that matter reaching out to them with redundant copies of promises we've already made somebody else, the way we do with certain other parties (e.g. the FMP getting the Market Socialists' hand-me-downs).
The other half (maybe three quarters) of the party just gives up and fucks around ineffectually or becomes the problematic right-wing element in another party. That is, they start voting for FMP or Reclamation or something in hopes of influencing a party that can occasionally get shit done.
Best case, that 'other half' becomes irrelevant as a political force.
Worst case, maybe instead of having an isolationist IF Party that wants to turtle, we get a weird hybrid "Reconquer the Red and Yellow Zones so the people native to those areas can
go back there" party that wants to charge our "triumphant and invincible armies" headlong into the teeth of Nod's remaining territories and probably start a nuclear war.
I could live with giving them a single promise, personally, as a purely experimental olive branch. If they become more reasonable in response, fine. If they don't, we can comfortably write them off for good and with a clean conscience.
The only "anything at all for IF" plans I've seen have two promises that are literally just us saying "yeah, we're going to do things we were already going to do anyway, we're not doing this for you," plus one promise (fortress towns) that's just "yeah, we'll continue doing a thing we've already done a lot of, for a little longer than we otherwise might have done."
It's ironic, but one of the most common demands we've seen from IF
voters (e.g. GDIWife) is something we already did: Increase InOps funding.
No, sorry. Only the promises with the - in front were used. I just had the full list there to consider them.
Should have cleaned it up, but I had to run off to an appointment.
I am very wary about all the 10k space population promises. That will be quite a few habitation bays needed. I'm not confident we can build those without pouring lots of free dice into Orbital, or delaying those shipyard bays and possible lunar bases / mining.
I'm convinced we can do it, and with Kane apparently deciding not to negotiate, we
should, because we need more leverage against him.
Also, lunar bases will count towards space population, so it's entirely plausible that our build path is:
Station Bay/
Leopard II Yard
Shala/
Columbia
Big Frickin' Moon City
And that this just takes us straight to the win.
If it means we don't do any more moon mining, frankly that's fine. Moon and asteroid mining are nice, but the income stream from them is starting to get big enough that the rest of GDI is gonna want to covet it. We're probably only able to keep it because it's still
LESS than the normal budget we'd have to spend to fully fund our Orbital dice, which is the theoretical pretext Starbound uses for letting us keep it.
Building up the biggest possible permanent space presence is a very good use of our Orbital assets, and for that matter our Free dice. If Kane's not going to see reason, it's arguably our only real hope of saving humanity, anyway.
That's the joke about this. The IF are pro-segregation assholes. And their hands are clean compared to the monster we are going to do business with. It's the annoyance I have in grandstanding against them. We are going to make a deal with Kane, a necessary one but still. The being responsible for more death then history can document. Who called down the Scrin on us. We're going to sign a treaty with him and unless his terms are super onerous? He will get what he wants.
Honestly, yeah, I'm with you.
Kane has the body count of at least a dozen Hitlers, and that is being
generous. It's probably more like 30-50 Hitlers.
Initiative First are terrible, but they're
normal terrible.
Frankly, I think a big part of it is that Initiative First resembles groups most SVers already know and loathe in real life, whereas Kane is a fictional supervillain with a suave demeanor and a cool backstory.
The difference is, we're considering working with Kane in order to literally save the planet and the vast majority of humanity, and on the basis that he's going to fuck off afterwards. Meanwhile, working with IF is entirely unnecessary, and legitimises their bigotry and hatefulness. Not to bring up real-world politics, but it's pretty obvious that compromising with racists and bigots in the name of moderation and under the threat of domestic terrorism just makes their views mainstream and convinces them that threatening violence allows them to get what they want.
I get you, but what's the over/under on negotiating with supervillains to save the world from a problem they created and exacerbated, all so they can get pretty much everything they really want and leave you with a barely satisfactory tool for survival in the aftermath?
10k should be relatively achievable, especially if we scale back Military investment to shake loose Free dice to put into space/Tiberium. 10k is Shala and Columbia completed plus their bays, but we can pretty reasonably do that in four years. 20k population however is a bridge too far I think, that's really pushing it. Even if 20k is theoretically possible it would require way too many compromises to make work.
I'm deliberately pushing it because I think it's our best hope of exerting pressure on Kane, personally, and I think that's worth spending on.
It's sort of like the massive Free dice spending in Military in the Third Four Year Plan, but now directed at a more dual-use set of projects that have direct civilian and species-survivability advantages alongside their impact on our Nod/Kane situation.
Sure it is achievable. But we know that there is a Visitor base out there. If we lock in 10k, I don't think we have any wiggle room for addressing other Space concerns without sucking dice out of other areas again.
Remember, we have two separate needs: People in space, and guns in space. From past experience, "people in space" is Orbital projects, and "guns in space" is Military projects. If we're worried about the Visitors, we need to make sure we have space clear in the Military projects tab to build cool shit for fighting space wars, more so than in the Orbital projects tab.
And frankly, I like our odds there.
