The thing is... There's a pretty close to 50/50 split (not exactly, but close) between people who want us all to just agree that IF should be fully locked out and think this is tiresome, and people who want us all to just agree that IF shouldn't be fully locked out and think this is tiresome.
I'm not sure there's a good resolution here that makes everyone happy.
What about the times when we don't want to activate all the dice in a department because we don't want to overcommit to certain projects and/or there are projects in a department we don't want to commit to? it's not just about how many resources we have available.
I don't foresee it being too much of a problem unless something weird happens. The potential point of tension is Services, I suppose, in that we might end up with nothing to do but AEVAs or something.
EDIT: Also don't forget that we owe InOps at least 60RPT a year.
On the scale of a 1200+ RpT budget increase, and with the starting point for our income stream being, say, 680 RpT to begin with, I don't foresee that being a problem.
Simon should add the 100 RpD space mining goal to his plan too for maximum pain.
You're probably memeing, but... Seriously no. If we're already committed to spending Free dice on Orbital to such a degree, we're in effect spending
more Free dice to get moon mines... but spending Free dice on moon mines is less efficient than spending Free dice on tiberium mines.
Also
@Ithillid any chance Litinov might make a free dice exception for orbital because of our massive orbital goals or does someone know if we have an idea and a timeline when we have enough money to start activating all department dice?
Despite the importance of fulfilling Space Population targets, we'll almost have to spend all our Free dice on Tiberium at first; in the long run it'll pay off because it'll make it a lot less painful to be throwing 20 R/die at a whole lot of dice.
Then why take the promise at all when it will limit us in flexibility?
Because hitting that 20000 target is actually something specific that I strongly desire to do, to the point where I wrote my plans around it.
If other people don't or didn't want that, they are welcome to vote for other plans, such as F0lkl0re's.
It's in other areas where I prize flexibility, because in those areas I don't consider hitting the target as a major goal in and of itself.
Changes look good, and it does not have the albatross of trying to get 20k people into space. Or the insane promise of not using free dice unless all department dice are active. Something we have rarely if ever done in the past.
The "insane promise" is relatively easy to fulfill these days unless we just literally never get projects costing less than 20 R/die in places like Services where running out of projects is a concern that happens semi-regularly.
Plus, worst case, it just forces us to mine more tiberium, coincidentally getting us more money to activate more dice and making the problem self-solving.
The way I see it, Initiative First isn't saying rude things on Twitter or in back rooms. That's just whatever. But they're not just being racist in polite company. They thought long and hard for four years, and the cream of their intellectual crop came back and openly presented to the floor of Parliament Bill #1488 to Bring Back Segregation Except Make It Mandatory and Planet-Wide.
It occurs to me that I'm honestly not sure whether this is a bill IF passed knowing it would fail, or if it's something that Seo just happens to know (with no intention of ever doing)
would make them happy if we did it.
Treasury has pretty full control over the housing market. A Treasury promise to build segregated Blue Zoner arcologies might not actually involve "Ozawa and the smartest people in IF figure out how to make a segregation bill pass Parliament." It might be a purely regulatory-type action.
Obviously we're not doing this and it would be massively out of character, but I'm trying to imagine how it would play out, logistically speaking, if we HAD voted for it.
@Simon_Jester we are finishing the Green Border this plan and if I have to become like you to do so I will.
"Green Border?" What do you mean?
This is very hyperbolic.
Their ask is garbage, but it's not what you're saying. They want yellow zoners excluded from blue zone universities, not excluded from higher education. Every other university type is fine.
...Our entire territory is Blue Zone, or about to be. What does it even
mean to exclude someone from GDI's Blue Zone universities but not other universities? Where else would they go to college, on
Columbia?
I think you took things a bridge too far here.
Unless of course the only universities after all our education improvement actions are exclusively in blue zones instead of being more widespread in which case I retract my statement and apologize.
I mean, there may be colleges of various kinds that WERE in Yellow Zones, but... then we blued those Yellow Zones.
I just want to remind people - didn't we promise Conestoga deployment? So that means we need the relevant 'yard bay built, plus the dev/deploy projects for the Conestoga herself. On top of the Leo II factory and station bay already started. If we're almost certainly going to need free dice to hit a 20k pop goal using right up through Q4 end of plan dice (and several of us don't like relying on last quarter dice to complete Plan Goals)... how are we going to keep our promise to develop and deploy the Conestoga? While getting 3-4+ capstones, Karachi Phase 1-5, SADN, GFZA factories, etc. Are we going to have any real wiggle room at all over the 4YP to handle unexpected crises or anything else that might go wrong? Particularly if the promise remains "No free dice outside Tib unless all dept dice are activated" and stays taken on a winning Plan.
Most of that doesn't conflict, really. Check Doruma's posts; we can make it work as long as we don't load ourselves down with Plan commitments
elsewhere requiring mandatory Free dice expenditure
in other departments. Remember that we have the means to easily make about 320 Progress per turn in our weakest areas (Agriculture, Light Industry) and much more in our stronger areas.
Also, the "three capstone" promise (which is the version that goes with "20000 in space" in my plans) can be fulfilled with North Boston and Chicago (both of them already committed to anyway) plus about 16 Light Industry dice at 20 R/die for Reykjavik. That's a pretty painless way to hit the target.
... the lack of Agriculture consumer products goals, my own pet issue with the Steel Talons. Can we address those more? Please?
The promise to commit to activating all our Agriculture dice every turn (unless we're willing to use all Free dice on Tiberium, I guess) covers it.
We
WILL do a lot in Agriculture, and since we have no Stored Food commitment, that means we'll be doing one of three things:
1) Increase bulk Food surplus because our population literally needs it in order to have enough to eat at the time,
2) Something amazingly attractive that doesn't directly feed people, like reforestation or poulticeplants, or
3) More Agriculture consumer products.
Even you will probably agree that if (1) is actually an issue somehow, it overrides (3), because people starving is more important than people having lots of yummies. (2) can only use up so much of our resources and energy, and I hope you'll agree is worthy and not us just "ignoring the real issues."
And... A lot of the time, it'll be (3). i'll be VERY surprised if we don't massively overfulfill the unambitious 40-point "Consoom from farms" goal, especially if you factor in the probable completion of
Shala.
Two of our military dice are in a position to walk off and I don't feel like we're doing enough to keep them around.
Expect to see one die per turn average from me on the Talons
anyway. You may see turns with no Talons funding in case a major project needs to be rushed into deployment, but if so, those will be offset by two Talons dice on the turn before or after.
I'm going to behave more or less as if that promise were in place, whether we end up making it or not.
@Simon_Jester
Bit of a request for you since without IF is in the lead and looks likely to win.
Can you change the following slightly?
"--[] Initiative First gets nothing"
To
--[] Initiative First gets nothing BECAUSE the treasury opposes their segregationist demands and as a result we are deliberately refusing demands which we have in fact promised to other parties.
Or something like that at least. An explanation as to
why Initiative first gets nothing.
Sorry, I won't. It feels too micro-managey. I only add lines like that into a plan because I want
the readers to know why something is being done when they look at the plan in the tally, even if they're not following the thread discussion (which is very intense).
I figure that if we vote to give IF nothing, Ithillid already knows why, and will act accordingly.
Reclamationalists are the real power behind the throne in GDI
(Seriously though, how are there only 12 of them? Hopefully they should grow somewhat)
I think part of the reason they're tiny is that people think of them as redundant. Other parties already go om nom nom on tiberium.
It's not that it's unachievable, it's that it would eat so many dice we could use for other things, things that are of equal or greater importance. Aiming for 20K in space is fine, even if I don't like it. Hard commitment to 20K is an albatross we've no need for and is just going to limit us, especially when we've already got other commitments. It feels like sacrificing everything else to do some we shouldn't do. We've got important medical technologies that need funding, cities to build, megaprojects to stand up, technologies to develop and deploy, Tiberium to fight, delicious foods to make available and Mad Science to indulge in. And with a 20K space goal, everything has to be made to work around that, and I hate it.
Most of that other stuff can be done perfectly well without competing with the space goal.
Please change the 20k space thing.
That is really going to make doing anything in space besides population things incredibly hard.
The 20k space thing was something I genuinely wanted. I never made anyone vote for it, have been AFK for periods totalling much of the vote session, and anyone at any time could build a 10k version of the same plans just by changing a few lines and copy-pasting. I'm actually very surprised it took until now for CrabMonarchy to do it and that it didn't happen 12-24 hours ago.
So the major issues I see that we need to address for military issues are:
Zone Armor, to relieve pressure on Zocom,
finishing the projects we were working on like Wingman Drones,
building up space naval capability (in conjunction with Orbital infrastructure, see the above point),
and developing and preparing to deploy the next generation of vehicles/weapons platforms.
... that's really the big stuff.
Of those four things, the first and fourth are two of our three major types of Military promises. The third is SADN, which didn't make your list but arguably should, because it blocks the main known remaining means by which Nod could theoretically inflict devastating losses on us.
Our Military promises are actually pretty tame and can easily be handled without Free dice, even if we lose a Military die or two. (Losing, say,
four would be problematic).
If we are redoing the vote, I'd lock in the IF orbital goal, percent income, and expenses as those were the top differentiators between the leading plans.
Given that most of the people who want the vote redone seem unhappy about the orbital goal, that might defeat the purpose.
Since the vote isn't over, have this very brief modification of the leading plan that drops the 20k promise to 10k, with no other changes. Is it inefficient to take promises without reaching a threshold? Yes, but we can go without 50 votes because the plan has a large enough margin as is, and I still like having a specific commitment to space population. Dunno if there'll be enough time for the vote to swing but I figured since the 20k was pretty controversial, might as well.
While I still favor 20000 over 10000, I am actually very pleased that someone actually
did this as opposed to merely expressing unhappiness that a plan with 20000 was winning.
