Attempting to Subvert the Plan: Dominion Edition

Retcon: Should General Horner (the MC) have been The Magistrate (Starcraft 1 PC)?

  • Yes

    Votes: 35 43.8%
  • No

    Votes: 29 36.3%
  • This does not matter to me

    Votes: 16 20.0%

  • Total voters
    80
  • Poll closed .
One detail I haven't noticed anyone pointing out: Hercules Freighter and Charon Boosters do not have the [Tech] header on them, and their descriptions imply that results are immediately applicable after completion. So it sounds like the Hercules can get built in Angustia without a follow-up project.
 
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I will note that while the SCVs are quite nice, in the immediate term for HI they distract from the category and require a lot of Free Dice to maneuver around to keep from being a total disaster. In order to not have SCVs basically tank our chances to get anything else major done in HI, Vehrec had to make it so that we don't get the Special Trait, we decide not to make any moves towards increasing our Free Dice, we don't spend any dice on Personal, etc, etc.

Because if that hadn't been done, then the SCVs would have actively made it significantly harder to complete the Shipyard, because the decreased progress needed would not come close to paying for the opportunity cost within HI, even if it helped elsewhere (because SCVs ARE cool, don't get me wrong.)

But such a path as is being suggested leads to neglecting other things quite a bit.

...also, I thought we weren't allowed to have alternate versions of our plan floating around? Oh well, though.
 
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In order to not have SCVs basically tank our chances to get anything else major done in HI, Vehrec had to make it so that we don't get the Special Trait, we decide not to make any moves towards increasing our Free Dice, we don't spend any dice on Personal, etc, etc.
I feel this is an unfair characterization, SCVs had no impact on increasing Free Dice. The Bureaucracy section uses the default 5 dice in both competing plans, the only difference is that @Vehrec opted not to use 2 dice on Pardon Dissidents, focusing instead on Veteran's Benefits + starting Forecast/Trends.

Because if that hadn't been done, then the SCVs would have actively made it significantly harder to complete the Shipyard, because the decreased progress needed would not come close to paying for the opportunity cost within HI, even if it helped elsewhere (because SCVs ARE cool, don't get me wrong.)
I don't see how the tracks? Finishing SCVs would shave off -100 progress on Dylar Shipyards (effectively +2 dice) while also further reducing ground-side projects that would add up to more time saved in the long-run, especially if they hit the auto-complete threshold.
 
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I feel this is an unfair characterization, SCVs had no impact on increasing Free Dice. The Bureaucracy section uses the default 5 dice in both competing plans, the only difference is that @Vehrec opted not to use 2 dice on Pardon Dissidents, opting to focus on Veteran's Benefits + starting Forecast/Trends.


I don't see how the tracks? Finishing SCVs would shave off -100 progress on Dylar Shipyards (effectively +2 dice) while also further reducing ground-side projects that would add up to more time saved in the long-run, especially if they hit the auto-complete threshold.

It tracks because in order to finish the SCVs without majorly shorting the Dylar Shipyards, four Free Dice needed to be invested in order to make progress on Dylar because otherwise you'd be going from 11 dice needed to 9 dice needed... and only two more turns left to do it.

Which is so obviously catastrophic and leaves the entire category at the mercy of luck and investing all possible in-category resources into Dylar for Q3 and Q4 that something had to be done, and that something involved taking all the Free dice and showing them into HI. This solves that one particular problem, but at the cost of not doing anything else with the Free Dice, because they've all been spent for the turn.

It also doesn't do the Special Trait, so frankly for that alone it'd be a nonstarter to me.
 
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[X] Plan Readying the SCVs for Reconstruction
[X] Plan Readying the SCVs And Special Bonuses
[x] [X] Plan Readying the SCVs for Reconstruction
You need to only use one set of brackets for your vote. By using two, the vote tally counts your vote as a separate one from the plan you want to vote for.
Which is so obviously catastrophic and leaves the entire category at the mercy of luck and investing all possible in-category resources into Dylar for Q3 and Q4 that something had to be done, and that something involved taking all the Free dice and showing them into HI. This solves that one particular problem, but at the cost of not doing anything else with the Free Dice.
Catastrophic? Seriously? The last phase of SCVs is massively beneficial to us across the board. I think it's completely worth spending free dice to get them done ASAP. (Not to mention the 100 progress discount on space projects, including Dylar.) And your plan doesn't put any dice on SCVs at all.
 
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[X] Plan Readying the SCVs for Reconstruction
[X] Plan Readying the SCVs And Special Bonuses

You need to only use one set of brackets for your vote. By using two, the vote tally counts your vote as a separate one from the plan you want to vote for.

Catastrophic? Seriously? The last phase of SCVs is massively beneficial to us across the board. I think it's completely worth spending free dice to get them done ASAP. And your plan doesn't put any dice on them at all.

I think the SCVs are cool, but that we have other priorities right now. You disagree, which is entirely within your right. You value the SCVs more than the Special Trait (though you also support a plan that has that, to be fair), helping the Unions, and starting work on getting two new Free Dice.

I value those three things higher than SCVs, and also value the latter two things higher than SCVs and thus do not support even the technically-illegal (but I have no room to complain because the rule making it illegal was literally made because I kept on making a bunch of slightly different versions of my plans) "Plan Readying the SCVs and Special Bonuses."
 
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I will note that while the SCVs are quite nice, in the immediate term for HI they distract from the category and require a lot of Free Dice to maneuver around to keep from being a total disaster. In order to not have SCVs basically tank our chances to get anything else major done in HI, Vehrec had to make it so that we don't get the Special Trait, we decide not to make any moves towards increasing our Free Dice, we don't spend any dice on Personal, etc, etc.

Because if that hadn't been done, then the SCVs would have actively made it significantly harder to complete the Shipyard, because the decreased progress needed would not come close to paying for the opportunity cost within HI, even if it helped elsewhere (because SCVs ARE cool, don't get me wrong.)

But such a path as is being suggested leads to neglecting other things quite a bit.

...also, I thought we weren't allowed to have alternate versions of our plan floating around? Oh well, though.
Hey, I made a version of my plan that has your bugbear special action in it, so don't say that because I did SCVs we can't get the special action. I've did that just to satisfy your interests, okay? I don't share your interest with increasing our available free dice and putting free dice on personal, that's fair, but I DO have a plan that takes the special action. I don't share your priorities in bureau/personal, but I tried to accommodate this one. So your actual objection to my plan is that I don't put enough free dice on personal actions (and I pick the wrong ones for your taste) and that I don't share your interest in rushing down more free dice for personal actions.

ETA: You know what tanked our chances to do anything else in HI? Agreeing to do the Dylarian shipyards in 1 year, that tanked our chances to do anything else in HI this year. I would much prefer, if I had my druthers, to do NIM instead.
 
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It tracks because in order to finish the SCVs without majorly shorting the Dylar Shipyards, four Free Dice needed to be invested in order to make progress on Dylar because otherwise you'd be going from 11 dice needed to 9 dice needed... and only two more turns left to do it.

Which is so obviously catastrophic and leaves the entire category at the mercy of luck and investing all possible in-category resources into Dylar for Q3 and Q4 that something had to be done, and that something involved taking all the Free dice and showing them into HI. This solves that one particular problem, but at the cost of not doing anything else with the Free Dice, because they've all been spent for the turn.

It also doesn't do the Special Trait, so frankly for that alone it'd be a nonstarter to me.
... No? This is clearly an exaggeration. 9 dice = completed in Q2 + Q3, if we're extremely unlucky it would only need a marginal effort in Q4. SCV reduction is a guaranteed return +2 free dice on Shipyards, plus further gains for anything that's auto-completed which Vehrec's plan neatly sets us up for in multiple projects. Like... the math clearly favors SCVs in terms of efficiency.

The main difference is putting 4 dice for the Special Team-building in your plan, compared to 4 dice on SCVs in Vehrec's plan. So blaming it on Dylar is kinda disingenuous, ngl.
 
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I think the SCVs are cool, but that we have other priorities right now. You disagree, which is entirely within your right. You value the SCVs more than the Special Trait (though you also support a plan that has that, to be fair), helping the Unions, and starting work on getting two new Free Dice.

I value those three things higher than SCVs, and also value the latter two things higher than SCVs and thus do not support even the technically-illegal (but I have no room to complain because the rule making it illegal was literally made because I kept on making a bunch of slightly different versions of my plans) "Plan Readying the SCVs and Special Bonuses."
An equitable disagreement is hardly call for language like "a total disaster" and "obviously catastrophic". That you're technically using that language to describe theoretical positions that no one is actually taking is also just. Weirdly alarmist.
 
An equitable disagreement is hardly call for language like "a total disaster" and "obviously catastrophic". That you're technically using that language to describe theoretical positions that no one is actually taking is also just. Weirdly alarmist.

...I didn't say that? Like I just realized you completely misunderstood what I said.

Here is what I said.

A plan that put five dice into SCVs but none into Dylar Shipbuilding is a "total disaster" and "obviously catastrophic." It leaves us with a big mandatory project left hanging with only two quarters remaining, leaving us a slim margin of error.

The creator of the plan realized that, and so put four free dice into Dylar Shipbuilding, which IS NOT a catastrophe.

But in doing so the plan has to invest all the free dice therein, which leaves other things on the table that I think are honestly more time-critical for the "Attempting to SUBVERT the Plan" part of the Quest. And that is the crux of my disagreement. I did not call Vehrec's plan a "total disaster", I just disagreed with it.
 
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I will note that while the SCVs are quite nice, in the immediate term for HI they distract from the category and require a lot of Free Dice to maneuver around to keep from being a total disaster. In order to not have SCVs basically tank our chances to get anything else major done in HI, Vehrec had to make it so that we don't get the Special Trait, we decide not to make any moves towards increasing our Free Dice, we don't spend any dice on Personal, etc, etc.
In reverse order:

1) @Vehrec spends dice on Personal. What you say here isn't strictly true. He spends no Free dice on Personal. Not the same thing.

2) I will be pleasantly surprised if the Special Trait turns out to be better for us than Phase 3 SCV production. Delaying acquisition of the trait by 1-2 turns (because we can't spend Free dice getting it) or even two turns could well be worth it if it means we get the SCV factory that much sooner. Even an extremely powerful trait like "+5 to all dice" isn't necessarily superior to "-50 to -100 to nearly all project Progress costs."

The part where this narrows down a lot of our options in Heavy Industry (since we are effectively forced to throw a ton of Free dice at Dylar IV next turn to make sure the bulk of the project completes in Q3), though, is a valid criticism. On the other hand, cutting the Progress costs of a ton of other projects by 50-100 points each has a lot of knock-on effects in other categories.
 
In reverse order:

1) @Vehrec spends dice on Personal. What you say here isn't strictly true. He spends no Free dice on Personal. Not the same thing.

2) I will be pleasantly surprised if the Special Trait turns out to be better for us than Phase 3 SCV production. Delaying acquisition of the trait by 1-2 turns (because we can't spend Free dice getting it) or even two turns could well be worth it if it means we get the SCV factory that much sooner. Even an extremely powerful trait like "+5 to all dice" isn't necessarily superior to "-50 to -100 to nearly all project Progress costs."

The part where this narrows down a lot of our options in Heavy Industry (since we are effectively forced to throw a ton of Free dice at Dylar IV next turn to make sure the bulk of the project completes in Q3), though, is a valid criticism. On the other hand, cutting the Progress costs of a ton of other projects by 50-100 points each has a lot of knock-on effects in other categories.

I mean, I wouldn't at all, because ultimately the Phase 3 SCV is pretty good, but it doesn't really even touch the "subvert the plan" part of the Quest at all.

My suspicion is that at least some of the Special Traits available will be things that will help us Subvert The Plan. If I'm wrong, obviously that changes some of the calculus. But I'm making my plan with the goal of both meeting our current "the plan" needs (and puts us well on track with those, IMO), and investing more time and effort in Subverting it.
 
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One detail I haven't noticed anyone pointing out: Hercules Freighter and Charon Boosters do not have the [Tech] header on them, and their descriptions imply that results are immediately applicable after completion. So it sounds like the Hercules can get built in Angustia without a follow-up project.

The first part is an error, which I will fix shortly. The second part is accurate, though; the Charon Boosters can be incorporated into existing production, and the project that builds the Hercules is Phase 2 of Angustia.
 
...I didn't say that? Like I just realized you completely misunderstood what I said.

Here is what I said.

A plan that put five dice into SCVs but none into Dylar Shipbuilding is a "total disaster" and "obviously catastrophic."

The creator of the plan realized that, and so put four free dice into Dylar Shipbuilding, which IS NOT a catastrophe.

But in doing so it has to invest all the free dice therein, which leaves other things on the table that I think are honestly more time-critical for the "Attempting to SUBVERT the Plan" part of the Quest.
What, exactly, is time critical about *any* of the currently available personal projects to 'subvert the plan?' Hell, what is subversive about lots of them-most of them don't even ammount to a pinprick of Mengsk, they're just setup actions.
I mean, I wouldn't at all, because ultimately the Phase 3 SCV is pretty good, but it doesn't really even touch the "subvert the plan" part of the Quest at all.

My suspicion is that at least some of the Special Traits available will be things that will help us Subvert The Plan. If I'm wrong, obviously that changes some of the calculus. But I'm making my plan with the goal of both meeting our current "the plan" needs (and puts us well on track with those, IMO), and investing more time and effort in Subverting it.
I invest all my personal dice into getting MORE PERSONAL DICE to subvert the plan, so don't complain too much about my lack of free dice to invest in subverting the plan. IIRC, your original criticism was that I'd leave us with more personal dice than can comfortably be funded if my mmemory serves.
 
...I didn't say that? Like I just realized you completely misunderstood what I said.

Here is what I said.

A plan that put five dice into SCVs but none into Dylar Shipbuilding is a "total disaster" and "obviously catastrophic." It leaves us with a big mandatory project left hanging with only two quarters remaining, leaving us a slim margin of error.

The creator of the plan realized that, and so put four free dice into Dylar Shipbuilding, which IS NOT a catastrophe.

But in doing so the plan has to invest all the free dice therein, which leaves other things on the table that I think are honestly more time-critical for the "Attempting to SUBVERT the Plan" part of the Quest. And that is the crux of my disagreement. I did not call Vehrec's plan a "total disaster", I just disagreed with it.
You misunderstand me. You're arguing down a strawman argument (for something none of the leading plans do) right before you turn around and say Vehrec isn't doing that, and that you disagree with his plan anyways. The first time I read your posts, I thought you were calling Vehrec's plan a disaster/catastrophic.
The part where this narrows down a lot of our options in Heavy Industry (since we are effectively forced to throw a ton of Free dice at Dylar IV next turn to make sure the bulk of the project completes in Q3), though, is a valid criticism.
Except Laurent's plan puts 5 dice on the Shipyards, and Vehrec's plan puts 4 dice - while also getting the SCVs. A 100 point discount on the Shipyards is worth more than the average die, so Vehrec's plan arguably does more to get the Shipyards done on time than Laurent's.
 
What, exactly, is time critical about *any* of the currently available personal projects to 'subvert the plan?' Hell, what is subversive about lots of them-most of them don't even ammount to a pinprick of Mengsk, they're just setup actions.
I invest all my personal dice into getting MORE PERSONAL DICE to subvert the plan, so don't complain too much about my lack of free dice to invest in subverting the plan. IIRC, your original criticism was that I'd leave us with more personal dice than can comfortably be funded if my mmemory serves.

Well, it does do that unless we neglect putting Free Dice in personal, and my own perspective is that no matter how many dice we have in Personal, we should also be adding 1-2 dice (and 2 once we have 6 Free Dice) to it every single turn.

So if your plan wins and we have 6 dice instead of five dice... I'm going to be out there advocating for 7+ dice in that category. Which I think will cause F problems but I think as a principle it's honestly pretty key because we've, tbh, been kinda slacking on the "subvert the plan" stuff.

As for the question, I think strengthening the Unions and increasing our TRUST actions will have some major benefits within the next year to the Subvert side of things.

You misunderstand me. You're arguing down a strawman argument (for something none of the leading plans do) right before you turn around and say Vehrec isn't doing that, and that you disagree with his plan anyways. The first time I read your posts, I thought you were calling Vehrec's plan a disaster/catastrophic.

Except Laurent's plan puts 5 dice on the Shipyards, and Vehrec's plan puts 4 dice - while also getting the SCVs. A 100 point discount on the Shipyards is worth more than the average die, so Vehrec's plan arguably does more to get the Shipyards done on time than Laurent's.

My argument is that my plan does more than enough to get the Shipyards, while doing more to empower TRUST, gain the special traits, and so on. Like, if your only goal is to Attempt to Fulfill the Plan you could honestly make a better plan than mine... or Vehrec's for that matter. I think Vehrec's falls a little closer to, "Focusing on things that will help fulfill the plan over things that will subvert the plan" than mine does, but both of our plans[1] are trying to balance two different elements and aspects.

[1] And Vehrec's secondary plan, which is technically something the QM explicitly forbid because I kept on doing the same thing to have multiple variations of my plan with slightly different names and the QM decided this was a bad thing, hence why I only have one version of my plan.
 
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My argument is that my plan does more than enough to get the Shipyards, while doing more to empower TRUST, gain the special traits, and so on. Like, if your only goal is to Attempt to Fulfill the Plan you could honestly make a better plan than mine... or Vehrec's for that matter. I think Vehrec's falls a little closer to, "Focusing on things that will help fulfill the plan over things that will subvert the plan" than mine does, but both of our plans[1] are trying to balance two different elements and aspects.
I don't understand why you keep re-explaining your argument to me.
 
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