Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Hazard · Feb 4, 2023

I'm not so sure the heating bill will be that large, especially if they get co-located with local crop production. That's a lot of waste heat that is coming off those bodies, and sharing an air supply loop with local oxygen production would greatly decrease the heating cost of the air supply.

They're also luxury foods for now. They're likely to be a key fat and protein source for our population as the herds grow, even if it's not enough to offset the loss of agricultural production purely calorie wise because we have to dedicate some of it towards supplying the herds with food.

Simon_Jester · Feb 4, 2023

Hazard said:
I'm not so sure the heating bill will be that large, especially if they get co-located with local crop production. That's a lot of waste heat that is coming off those bodies, and sharing an air supply loop with local oxygen production would greatly decrease the heating cost of the air supply.

They're also luxury foods for now. They're likely to be a key fat and protein source for our population as the herds grow, even if it's not enough to offset the loss of agricultural production purely calorie wise because we have to dedicate some of it towards supplying the herds with food.

1) The dairy domes are dairy ranches; they're not a direct source of large amounts of meat and aren't planned to. Because raising steers to slaughter for meat is even more resource-inefficient than raising cows to provide milk.

A dairy cow with the right stimuli can produce [googles] maybe 15-30 liters of milk a day for ten months per lactation period. Today in the US (which tends towards the higher end of that scale, deliberately pushing for higher production at the cost of wearing the cows out), they are typically slaughtered after about three lactations because production starts to drop off. That's still a lifetime production of about 8400 liters of milk (1754 gallons) per cow- and you could get somewhat more if you were willing to keep feeding them.

Then there's about 440 pounds (200 kg) of beef from the same cow, once, and you have to feed the cow continuously for two years to get to that one-time payoff anyway.

Even when the dairy ranches are fully scaled up and operational, they will be primarily dairy operations. They will provide meat, but there's a reason that in the US, only 20% of beef comes from dairy cows. Because the other 80% is on cows specifically raised for that purpose.

...

2) Yeah, but by the time they're not luxury foods, those ranching domes will already long since be complete. Remember, I'm not talking about delaying completion of Phase 2 (or for that matter Phase 3) for years here. I'm just saying that no harm will be done if we wait one, two, or even three quarters.

3) Furthermore, again, my point is that the sheer scale of the operations and the extent to which there is good logical reason for them to be distributed just makes them bad targets for Nod sabotage. By the time there are enough of them to be feeding lots of GDI's population lots of the time, they will by nature be even more distributed, and they should already be pretty distributed.

There are places where by smuggling one bomb or one chunk of tiberium in you could cause massive destruction that would do a lot of large scale widespread harm to GDI. Individual dairy ranching domes aren't one of them, so I don't see Nod sabotage as a likely threat. Saboteurs, by nature, will normally be aiming for singular high-value targets, not places where they have to blow up 100 facilities all at the same time to do more than scratch damage to the Initiative as a whole.

Prime 2.0 · Feb 4, 2023

[X] Plan SADNed Alloys

lentil · Feb 4, 2023

I'm only going to vote for plans putting the maximum feasible (7 dice) investment into SADN. We have WoG on the effects of even a limited nuclear exchange, which I'll quote here for anyone who missed them:

Ithillid said:
Short version, bad. Long version, very bad.

More seriously, nuclear exchange weighting depends on exactly who is lobbing devices. If you are looking at the general Brotherhood as a whole deciding that it is time for humanity to die, well, humanity dies. If you are looking at what one person can do, say Al Isfahani, you are likely to lose about half your Tib refining capacity, go double digit negative on capgoods, and a few other things. well, barring functioning SADN anyway.

(Bolding mine)

and

Ithillid said:
Close only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades and tactical nuclear weapons. While it is far enough away that a detonation right in the middle of Jeddah would do little to nothing to Mecca, Mecca is inherently kind of in the middle of any defensive array that protects Jeddah meaningfully, and punching missiles through that would absolutely put Mecca at risk.

If we have a nuclear exchange with Al Isfahani, we're looking at risks to Mecca as well as severe impacts to our economy. We cannot afford a nuclear exchange. Al Isfahani has been sold out by other NOD warlords, and by now he's no doubt found out. The sooner we have SADN operational the safer we are; nothing is more important than preventing nuclear strikes on GDI cities and factories.

[x] Plan Powering Zappy AMS (now with alloys)
[x] Plan SADNed Alloys
[x] Plan Economy obligations

Hazard · Feb 4, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
A dairy cow with the right stimuli can produce [googles] maybe 15-30 liters of milk a day for ten months per lactation period. Today in the US (which tends towards the higher end of that scale, deliberately pushing for higher production at the cost of wearing the cows out), they are typically slaughtered after about three lactations because production starts to drop off. That's still a lifetime production of about 8400 liters of milk (1754 gallons) per cow- and you could get somewhat more if you were willing to keep feeding them.

Density of milk is close enough to water that we can estimate 1 liter of milk = 1 kilogram and accept the rounding error.

A kilogram of milk is about 4.3% fat and 3.5% protein. Over a lifetime supply of 8400 liters of milk, and thus 8400 kilograms of milk, we are talking just shy of 300 kilograms of protein and about 360 kilogram of fat. Please do not misrepresent a dairy cow as 'not being a source of protein and fats' while being milked, they provide over the course of their lifetime in excess of 600 kilograms of these substances as components of their milk. The beef they provide after slaughter is a substantial share of the total, but it's not their greatest contribution to the Initiative's food supply.

bigking321 · Feb 5, 2023

lentil said:
If we have a nuclear exchange with Al Isfahani, we're looking at risks to Mecca as well as severe impacts to our economy. We cannot afford a nuclear exchange. Al Isfahani has been sold out by other NOD warlords, and by now he's no doubt found out. The sooner we have SADN operational the safer we are; nothing is more important than preventing nuclear strikes on GDI cities and factories.

I mean, you're not wrong. But I do feel that the potential of a full out nuclear assault is not really that high. It would result in us absolutely destroying the Shah. Plus it seems to be the edge of his territory where it starts to mix with the Bannerjees territory.

Ithillid said:
While much of this is the territory of the Shah of Atom, Al-Isfahani, who was neither consulted nor asked his opinion, it is intermixed with some of the Bannerjee's loyalists.

It's not like we are driving a wedge into the heart of his territory. It's more like cutting a slice off the edge.

He probably won't be happy about it and launch some attacks, but I doubt he will try and nuke everything over it. Especially since he probably knows it's coming.

Also, Kane seemed to react quite happily to the negotiations. I very much doubt he would want to stir up another major skirmish after the regency war. Especially if us negotiating is something he wants.

I might be completely wrong of course.

But I imagine the Shah might get replaced like Gideon was if he tries to go rogue and go out in a blase of nuclear fire.

Simon_Jester · Feb 5, 2023

Hazard said:
Density of milk is close enough to water that we can estimate 1 liter of milk = 1 kilogram and accept the rounding error.

A kilogram of milk is about 4.3% fat and 3.5% protein. Over a lifetime supply of 8400 liters of milk, and thus 8400 kilograms of milk, we are talking just shy of 300 kilograms of protein and about 360 kilogram of fat. Please do not misrepresent a dairy cow as 'not being a source of protein and fats' while being milked, they provide over the course of their lifetime in excess of 600 kilograms of these substances as components of their milk. The beef they provide after slaughter is a substantial share of the total, but it's not their greatest contribution to the Initiative's food supply.

I think I should have been wordier.

To be clear, my underlying point is that the dairy ranches will not become that significant a source of production for the typical GDI citizen's diet for many years to come. That's not because we won't be building the domes until then. It's because the milk cows and other animals in question that will fill them simply haven't been born yet and will not be for some time. Eventually the scale of the operation will make them a more significant contributor... but that time is years in the future and is not really relevant to a discussion of whether we should be expanding the dome operations right now, this quarter, when we would essentially just be building empty domes, or splitting up existing herds that are already far smaller than their domes could support into even tinier penny packets.

...

My remarks about milk versus beef were directed specifically at the idea that the domes might provide that much beef. They will probably never provide beef on a scale that makes beef, the actual meat, commonplace in GDI society, because they are specifically dairy ranches and will not be focused around raising cattle for slaughter.

We would need a separate set of domes, probably configured along different lines, for that purpose.

lentil said:
I'm only going to vote for plans putting the maximum feasible (7 dice) investment into SADN. We have WoG on the effects of even a limited nuclear exchange, which I'll quote here for anyone who missed them:

If we have a nuclear exchange with Al Isfahani, we're looking at risks to Mecca as well as severe impacts to our economy. We cannot afford a nuclear exchange. Al Isfahani has been sold out by other NOD warlords, and by now he's no doubt found out. The sooner we have SADN operational the safer we are; nothing is more important than preventing nuclear strikes on GDI cities and factories.

The risk to Mecca and its surroundings is exactly the same with 5+AA dice as it is with seven dice. Either way, we complete Phase 1 this turn with effectively 100% probability.

Our existing (pre-SADN) air defenses could probably shoot down some of al-Isfahani's missiles, but not enough to protect any target he cared to expend multiple missiles on, or to have any real confidence of saving a target a single missile had been shot at. Our performance against previous high-speed or stealthy missile attacks has been something like "shoot down one quarter" or "shoot down one half," not good enough.

Phase 1 will take two quarters to start coming online, so we might get some effective defense against salvoes of nuclear cruise missiles starting in 2063Q3 or Q4. The full system will not come fully online for six quarters (late 2064), and will cover only Chicago, Mecca-Medina-Jeddah, and as I recall a major ASAT control ground station in Greenland which is no longer truly critical but which Space Force probably likes to maintain in case of all three ASAT control stations in orbit going down at once due to some weird superweapon.

Again, the "Attempting" plans in this cycle also give us this result. Putting seven dice on SADN gives us this result no faster. Mecca is no more or less safe either way.

...

The only effect is on how fast we complete Phase 2, which covers key industrial targets besides Chicago and the Mecca-Medina-Jeddah area. All those targets are out of range of al-Isfahani's land-based missiles, but could be struck by his missile submarines if he chose to use them and if they got into range of their targets undetected.

Phase 2 might be completed in 2063Q1 with 5+AA dice, but the odds aren't good. More likely, it would be completed in 2063Q2, potentially/possibly/hopefully along with Phase 3 which covers major GDI cities that aren't key industrial targets. So Phase 2 protection would be on the same schedule as I listed above for Mecca, only three months slower to start and to reach full coverage.

A seven-die plan like SADNing Alloys gives us a good (but not certain) chance of removing that specific three month delay, and will make it easier to bring Phase 3 online starting in 2063Q2 with less risk of it being delayed to 2063Q3.

That is all.

The difference is not "we have a lot of targets covered when al-Isfahani nukes us that would otherwise be uncovered." It is that specific defense rings, all around distant locations al-Isfahani may or may not even individually decide to attack or may or may not be able to strike even if he wants to due to a lack of sufficient nuclear missile submarines out, underway, and able to reach their targets, will be ready specifically about three months earlier, probably.

...

Given the lack of interest in SADN deployment we collectively shared throughout 2062 when it was 'only' the Bannerjees' nuclear capabilities we were worrying about and to a lesser extent al-Isfahani's even though he would likely be affected to, I find sudden focus on absolute maximum SADN investment a little... well.

HousePet · Feb 5, 2023

I don't really see any need for any more than 4 dice on SADN at the moment.
All we are trying to do is stop nuking Mecca being an easy option. 4 dice achieves that.
SADN 2 doesn't make it any harder for the Shah to nuke Mecca, and more importantly, doesn't stop him using conventional attacks if he gets miffed.
SADN 3 might make it hard for Nod to make a strategic missile strike against our infrastructure. But if they are angry enough to do that, SADN 3 means that they will just use a different method. Reminder that someone can walk terrorist weapons through our security.
Over focus on SADN, and Krukov and Stahl will poke holes in our conventional defences.

lentil · Feb 5, 2023

bigking321 said:
Plus it seems to be the edge of his territory where it starts to mix with the Bannerjees territory.

It's not like we are driving a wedge into the heart of his territory. It's more like cutting a slice off the edge.

Do you have a source for that? Because what you quoted only says that "much of this is the territory of the Shah of Atom, Al-Isfahani" and that the remainder is "intermixed with some of the Bannerjee's loyalists." None of that tells us what part of his territory we're taking, or how important it is. Given that we expect to fight a war for it, I wouldn't minimize the importance.

As far as the likelihood of this escalating to a major nuclear attack, in comparison to previous wars or projected fights with other warlords like the Bannerjees, Al Isfahani's thing is nuclear weapons to the point that he's also called the "Shah of Atom." He's going to use nukes, and given that he's been hung out to dry by the other NOD warlords, it's likely he's going to feel that there's an existential threat - which is what it would take for him to escalate past tactical usage or local strategic targets to full nuclear assault. Getting key industrial and (in later stages) civilian targets protected as soon as possible should be a priority.

Phalfpipe · Feb 5, 2023

[X] Plan Attempting To Feed The Fires Of Industry NTU Edition
[X] Plan SADNed Alloys

I don't think we need to worry about the Shah going nuclear. Right now he's under more pressure from his allies than he ever got from us, and our only border with him is across the Himalayan mountain range.

Simon_Jester · Feb 5, 2023

HousePet said:
I don't really see any need for any more than 4 dice on SADN at the moment.
All we are trying to do is stop nuking Mecca being an easy option. 4 dice achieves that.

Well, 4+AA or five dice really kills that last smidgen of a chance of not completing Phase 1.

With that said, I have ambitions well beyond "make it not easy for him to nuke Mecca." My hope is to delay Karachi until 2064Q4, and for by that time, to have it be hard for him to nuke any truly major GDI target in all of our territory. If we complete Phase 3 in 2063Q2, I think we can accomplish that. Getting there after spending 5+AA dice (or seven) in Q1 will be easier than if we just spend four.

SADN 2 doesn't make it any harder for the Shah to nuke Mecca, and more importantly, doesn't stop him using conventional attacks if he gets miffed.

It actually does stop him from launching conventional missile attacks to any good effect, and it stops him from using nuclear missile submarines against a variety of key industrial targets (e.g. some of the ones he'd probably be hitting to knock us down into negative double digits Capital Goods production)

SADN 3 might make it hard for Nod to make a strategic missile strike against our infrastructure. But if they are angry enough to do that, SADN 3 means that they will just use a different method. Reminder that someone can walk terrorist weapons through our security.
Over focus on SADN, and Krukov and Stahl will poke holes in our conventional defences.

Completing SADN won't make it easier for them to do that, and it won't make al-Isfahani in particular more able to do that. Furthermore, al-Isfahani's spent a long time buildling up and maintaining his own ability to hit us with nukes by fairly conventional means. If that is suddenly nullified, he becomes a lot weaker and won't be able to just snap his fingers and build up a new capability that can replace it. Someone like Mehretu might hardly be affected or inconvenienced by SADN, but someone like al-Isfahani or Bintang will find their ability to threaten us significantly reduced for quite a while even if they do figure out a workable Plan B.

lentil said:
Do you have a source for that? Because what you quoted only says that "much of this is the territory of the Shah of Atom, Al-Isfahani" and that the remainder is "intermixed with some of the Bannerjee's loyalists." None of that tells us what part of his territory we're taking, or how important it is. Given that we expect to fight a war for it, I wouldn't minimize the importance.

Well, you'd think that if it were the core of his territory, it probably wouldn't be right on his border with the Bannerjees, or even very close to that border.

Honestly, what I think will be more decisive to al-Isfahani's calculations is not the actual land we're going to be taking from him, but rather the fact that it will form a continuous belt blocking him off from the Bannerjees to the south. And that the Bannerjees apparently show no interest in cutting this belt to reopen the connection, and in fact basically just step aside and let GDI do this.

At which point al-Isfahani is thinking "fuck, they just walled me off against the Red Zone behind me, and there's no sign of help from the other side of the wall."

At that point, he has very few choices except:

1) Follow the Caravanserai's lead and cut a deal,
2) Throw everything he has at trying to destroy the road project, hoping that if he fails he'll at least be tolerated as a rump state that GDI doesn't consider worth destroying, or
3) Go out in a blaze of glory hitting distant but valuable GDI targets so they regret ever crossing him, in the full knowledge that he himself will not survive this and the nation he's built for himself will be effectively destroyed as a warning to other Nod warlords who might decide to play stupid games and win stupid prizes.

Phalfpipe said:
I don't think we need to worry about the Shah going nuclear. Right now he's under more pressure from his allies than he ever got from us, and our only border with him is across the Himalayan mountain range.

Much of this will change if we build the Karachi route, and we plan to. THen we'll have a border right along the full length of his territory, right where his border with the Bannerjees used to be.

Also, if I may ask, is there a particular reason you voted for Nottheunmaker's NTU version but not my OG version? The plan is more or less the one I drafted before the vote started; Nottheunmaker was simply decisive and active about posting a modified form of it while I was still in bed. I have no problem with that and am fine with him winning, but I was wondering what you like about NTU that I haven't got going on in OG.

bigking321 · Feb 5, 2023

lentil said:
Do you have a source for that? Because what you quoted only says that "much of this is the territory of the Shah of Atom, Al-Isfahani" and that the remainder is "intermixed with some of the Bannerjee's loyalists." None of that tells us what part of his territory we're taking, or how important it is. Given that we expect to fight a war for it, I wouldn't minimize the importance.

I... guess I'm making a bit of a assumption?

The part I quoted seems to indicate that the area is right between the territories controlled by each but because of the negotiation we are moving more into the Shah side to leave the Bannerjees mostly alone even if they still control some of the area.

I guess the Shah could have some important infrastructure next to the river that he highly values.

But as far as the area of territory affected I do think it's more of us intruding on the edge but you do have a completely valid point about whether or not it's a important part of the edge.

Simon_Jester · Feb 5, 2023

bigking321 said:
I... guess I'm making a bit of a assumption?

The part I quoted seems to indicate that the area is right between the territories controlled by each but because of the negotiation we are moving more into the Shah side to leave the Bannerjees mostly alone even if they still control some of the area.

I guess the Shah could have some important infrastructure next to the river that he highly values.

The Indus valley is, in real life, a lot more populous than the upland and mountainous areas to its west. It's entirely possible that even with all the changes of the past seventy years or so, that's still true and that the road project would cut him off from major population and industrial centers that are part of his power base, or at least put those centers within GDI artillery range and thus make them completely untenable as major strongholds. The Bannerjees are much less sensitive to this because their territory is a lot larger and includes a lot more places that are good to live in, or were before tiberium. Whereas al-Isfahani's surviving Yellow Zone territory is mostly places that, even before tiberium, were desolate or mountainous or whatever.

Though that would always have been a problem to some extent, if so. Remember, the threat of al-Isfahani going nuclear isn't new, even if it may have been significant elevated by the fallout of the recent treaty.

Phht · Feb 5, 2023

Re: Nuclear strikes.

We can likely presume a very low chance of a "strategic" exchange on the level mentioned by Ithillid, because that'd probably make Kane unhappy and making Kane unhappy at that level means you get Seth'd. Look at Kane's statements to Gideon and Bintang on nukes at the end of the Regency War. He does not appear to want GDI to retaliate in kind, which makes sense given that he needs humanity to build a way to get him off this tiberium cursed planet before it goes boom and that's not possible if we wipe ourselves out in nuclear fire. Thus a full scale exchange is not a likely option, particularly since that would basically drop GDI back to 2049-2050... and I'd expect the nuclear caches to get popped open and canned sunshine deployed in such a situation because GDI's already fucked.

A "tactical" nuclear exchange is possible. The Shah has done so. 2050s Middle East, Nod troops encircled by GDI forces. The Shah used a series of nukes to blow a hole in GDI lines, allowing Nod forces to escape to his territory. GDI decided not to pursue in case of more nukes, and in fact basically suspended operations in that region for a month or two while waiting to see if more nukes were coming anyhow. None did, operations resumed without issue.

How likely is a "tactical" exchange? Well, the Shah would have to weigh the risks and rewards. Is dropping nukes on his territory worth stopping GDI's supply line/Karachi? Part of that depends on where the wind blows. Is he willing to accept radioactive fallout landing on his territory? Is he willing to accept it landing on the Bannerjees' territory? How likely is it to provoke retaliation in kind from GDI? Is he willing to use nukes in proximity to his own people, or risk Kane's wrath by targeting GDI infrastructure/industry elsewhere (and thus increase the chances of GDI retaliating in kind)?

On the other side, how willing are the Bannerjees to potentially take radioactive fallout on their territory and citizens? From this perspective, I feel it's unlikely that they would risk that mess on top of their efforts against Tiberium, and thus wouldn't drive GDI into sections of the Shah's lands that would likely provoke a nuclear response.

All that being said, we should get Phase 1 up and running at a minimum. Better safe that becoming a Fallout game with Tiberium making things screwier.

Simon_Jester · Feb 5, 2023

Oh, I totally expect al-Isfahani to throw nukes at the Karachi project unless he decides to cut a deal with us. Although...

Phht said:
On the other side, how willing are the Bannerjees to potentially take radioactive fallout on their territory and citizens? From this perspective, I feel it's unlikely that they would risk that mess on top of their efforts against Tiberium, and thus wouldn't drive GDI into sections of the Shah's lands that would likely provoke a nuclear response.

Something to this.

All that being said, we should get Phase 1 up and running at a minimum. Better safe that becoming a Fallout game with Tiberium making things screwier.

We need to do more than that. I plan to spend about twelve dice on SADN between this turn and next turn, enough to be pretty sure of finishing Phase 3. Maybe eleven dice. And I count an AA die as being about 2/3 of a die, roughly, for the record.

The only reason my plan contains this much diversion of effort from SADN is because I think both zrbite guns and the Santiago factory are that important.

Lightwhispers · Feb 5, 2023

bigking321 said:
I... guess I'm making a bit of a assumption?

The part I quoted seems to indicate that the area is right between the territories controlled by each but because of the negotiation we are moving more into the Shah side to leave the Bannerjees mostly alone even if they still control some of the area.

I guess the Shah could have some important infrastructure next to the river that he highly values.

But as far as the area of territory affected I do think it's more of us intruding on the edge but you do have a completely valid point about whether or not it's a important part of the edge.

From what I recall of how the route was described, we start off going northish from Karachi through border gore, but then right into his territory, before swinging eastward. Consider the likelihood of running through what he considers core/important territory very high.

Phht said:
Re: Nuclear strikes.

We can likely presume a very low chance of a "strategic" exchange on the level mentioned by Ithillid, because that'd probably make Kane unhappy and making Kane unhappy at that level means you get Seth'd. Look at Kane's statements to Gideon and Bintang on nukes at the end of the Regency War. He does not appear to want GDI to retaliate in kind, which makes sense given that he needs humanity to build a way to get him off this tiberium cursed planet before it goes boom and that's not possible if we wipe ourselves out in nuclear fire. Thus a full scale exchange is not a likely option, particularly since that would basically drop GDI back to 2049-2050... and I'd expect the nuclear caches to get popped open and canned sunshine deployed in such a situation because GDI's already fucked.

A "tactical" nuclear exchange is possible. The Shah has done so. 2050s Middle East, Nod troops encircled by GDI forces. The Shah used a series of nukes to blow a hole in GDI lines, allowing Nod forces to escape to his territory. GDI decided not to pursue in case of more nukes, and in fact basically suspended operations in that region for a month or two while waiting to see if more nukes were coming anyhow. None did, operations resumed without issue.

How likely is a "tactical" exchange? Well, the Shah would have to weigh the risks and rewards. Is dropping nukes on his territory worth stopping GDI's supply line/Karachi? Part of that depends on where the wind blows. Is he willing to accept radioactive fallout landing on his territory? Is he willing to accept it landing on the Bannerjees' territory? How likely is it to provoke retaliation in kind from GDI? Is he willing to use nukes in proximity to his own people, or risk Kane's wrath by targeting GDI infrastructure/industry elsewhere (and thus increase the chances of GDI retaliating in kind)?

On the other side, how willing are the Bannerjees to potentially take radioactive fallout on their territory and citizens? From this perspective, I feel it's unlikely that they would risk that mess on top of their efforts against Tiberium, and thus wouldn't drive GDI into sections of the Shah's lands that would likely provoke a nuclear response.

All that being said, we should get Phase 1 up and running at a minimum. Better safe that becoming a Fallout game with Tiberium making things screwier.

Tacnukes (of the sort seen in-game) are, I feel, pretty much a certainty. He already nuked one of our bases during fighting farther from his core territories, a while back.
Strategic attacks are... well, it depends, but I think it rather likely he'll at least try to go after some of our industry. Anti-population attacks seem less likely to me, but that's just a feeling.

Dmol8 · Feb 5, 2023

So I've edited my vote to approval vote for every plan that does Lab Meat this turn which are so far only the Plans from @Simon_Jester and @LordArcturus. I've also accidentally decapitated Simon's plan, but I've managed to put it's head back on after like half an hour of work. So no harm no foul there.

As such I am declaring myself a single issue voter for Lab Meat. My plan is still on the table, but let's be real here my plans have never gotten into the competition for top voted so far.

BoSPaladin · Feb 5, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
Given the lack of interest in SADN deployment we collectively shared throughout 2062 when it was 'only' the Bannerjees' nuclear capabilities we were worrying about and to a lesser extent al-Isfahani's even though he would likely be affected to, I find sudden focus on absolute maximum SADN investment a little... well.

Adressing this in particular. We didn't worry about the bannerjees nukes because Karachi wasn't an existential threat to them in the same way that it could be to the Shah.

And in point of fact, we made strong efforts to negotiate with nod India precisely so that we could avoid fighting the bannerjees.

Which was, in fact successful and even resulted in diplomacy with bintang and the chinese warlords.

The issue being that the nuclear Shah doesn't want to be a part of said peacedeal (he could have been and could still be if he wants.) We don't necessarily need to take his territory. So long as we can pass supplies through it to Tibet/BZ18.

We weren't worried about the sadn previously because we didn't need or want to cross the redlines in the aftermath of the regency war and were largely content with our territorial gains and could afford other military expenditures.

Thus we planned for Karachi. Envisioning a separate conventional war against the bannerjees, and notably not an existential threat to them. So the risk of nukes seemed low.

Now, in contrast to that we've learned this will not be a war against the bannerjees, went further and even got their agreement. With the caveat that we will instead be contesting that territory with a warlord who more or less, 'only' has nukes as his big claim to fame.

In this scenario, in light of the new information, the SADN has spiked in importance.

aledeth · Feb 5, 2023

[X] Plan Attempting To Feed The Fires Of Industry NTU Edition

Nottheunmaker · Feb 5, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
Nottheunmaker was simply decisive and active about posting a modified form of it while I was still in bed. I have no problem with that and am fine with him winning, but I was wondering what you like about NTU that I haven't got going on in OG.

Not as decisive as I would've liked, but I figured I'd be asleep by the time you woke up and wanted to get something that matched my priorities. Plus I felt bad posting something that wasn't really mine and with the changes I wanted before you had a chance to respond, especially incase I missed something. (Which I did, needed like 4 edits). I'm also very happy with your plan and am fine with it winning, even if I'd obviously prefer mine.

Having said that, what makes you wanna get on Lab Meat over Agriculture Mechanization? I feel the latter is important and could cut a lot of the cost of reforestation, plus maybe increase the output of our industry plants. No solid evidence, but it feels sensible.

Not that I don't see the benefits of lab meat. More meat for everyone is a great thing to strive for. And while the Ranching Domes are helping with that, they are a long ways away from doing so right now.

Simon_Jester · Feb 5, 2023

Lightwhispers said:
Tacnukes (of the sort seen in-game) are, I feel, pretty much a certainty. He already nuked one of our bases during fighting farther from his core territories, a while back.
Strategic attacks are... well, it depends, but I think it rather likely he'll at least try to go after some of our industry. Anti-population attacks seem less likely to me, but that's just a feeling.

The main catch is that to hit enough of our industry to matter he'd have to go full-bore and draw down WMD retaliation from GDI.

If he's trying for a limited nuclear war (the kind he can personally survive losing if Kane or underlings don't kill him first), he'd probably restrict himself to nuclear attacks against, say, key embarkation points and airfields in BZ-4 that we're using to support the landings.

The risk is that he won't feel so limited.

BoSPaladin said:
Adressing this in particular. We didn't worry about the bannerjees nukes because Karachi wasn't an existential threat to them in the same way that it could be to the Shah.

And in point of fact, we made strong efforts to negotiate with nod India precisely so that we could avoid fighting the bannerjees.

Which was, in fact successful and even resulted in diplomacy with bintang and the chinese warlords.

The issue being that the nuclear Shah doesn't want to be a part of said peacedeal (he could have been and could still be if he wants.) We don't necessarily need to take his territory. So long as we can pass supplies through it to Tibet/BZ18.

We weren't worried about the sadn previously because we didn't need or want to cross the redlines in the aftermath of the regency war and were largely content with our territorial gains and could afford other military expenditures.

Thus we planned for Karachi. Envisioning a separate conventional war against the bannerjees, and notably not an existential threat to them. So the risk of nukes seemed low.

Now, in contrast to that we've learned this will not be a war against the bannerjees, went further and even got their agreement. With the caveat that we will instead be contesting that territory with a warlord who more or less, 'only' has nukes as his big claim to fame.

In this scenario, in light of the new information, the SADN has spiked in importance.

I mean, I for one could have sworn that at various points in time in the past, I had mentioned "we will also probably be pissing off al-Isfahani, and he has nukes, and we should probably get working on SADN" at various points in past turns. Maybe not consistently enough, and I haven't exactly been good about writing SADN into my plans reliably.

But I think it was on at least some of our radar.

aledeth said:
[] Plan Attempting To Feed The Fires Of Industry NTU Edition

May I ask what you like about NTU over OG? I'm curious what people think there.

Nottheunmaker said:
Not as decisive as I would've liked, but I figured I'd be asleep by the time you woke up and wanted to get something that matched my priorities. Plus I felt bad posting something that wasn't really mine and with the changes I wanted before you had a chance to respond, especially incase I missed something. (Which I did, needed like 4 edits).

Some of them were edits I'd have needed to make too.

Having said that, what makes you wanna get on Lab Meat over Agriculture Mechanization? I feel the latter is important and could cut a lot of the cost of reforestation, plus maybe increase the output of our industry plants. No solid evidence, but it feels sensible.

Hwrm?

Well, as to why I chose it, it was because I had only one die to work with, and wanted to take an option that might actually resolve with the use of only one die. Also because we're specifically focusing mainly on feeding consumers the good stuff, and Lab Meat leads more directly to that than does upscaled bulk food production. Rest assured that Phase 2 mechanization will be showing up from me in a subsequent plan; I just didn't feel like this turn was the right turn while also wanting to work on tarberries and spider cotton.

Simon_Jester · Feb 5, 2023

@Derpmind , I know you don't like being gratuitously tagged and I apologize if this was something you wouldn't want but it's specifically to you:

I have edited the Fruticulture Bay into my plan, taking one die off the Shala station core.

BoSPaladin · Feb 5, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
I mean, I for one could have sworn that at various points in time in the past, I had mentioned "we will also probably be pissing off al-Isfahani, and he has nukes, and we should probably get working on SADN" at various points in past turns. Maybe not consistently enough, and I haven't exactly been good about writing SADN into my plans reliably.

But I think it was on at least some of our radar.

You have mentioned it in the past yes, but if it's not in your plans reliably just 'mentioning' it doesn't count for a whole lot right now does it?

I also find it rather disingenuous of you to claim that other people in the past didn't do enough for SADN, meanwhile, your current plan has 5 military dice+1 AA dice, while other plans have 7 full military dice into SADN.

It almost seems like you're just trying to poke holes in other peoples plans and find fault. If you wanted to put more effort into SADN you could.

bigking321 · Feb 5, 2023

That really doesn't seem fair.

He just said he hasn't been consistent about bringing it up or putting it into his own plans. And said he hopes to potentially get phase 3 done in another turn.

Let's just calm down a bit.

Dmol8 · Feb 5, 2023

Nottheunmaker said:
Not as decisive as I would've liked, but I figured I'd be asleep by the time you woke up and wanted to get something that matched my priorities. Plus I felt bad posting something that wasn't really mine and with the changes I wanted before you had a chance to respond, especially incase I missed something. (Which I did, needed like 4 edits). I'm also very happy with your plan and am fine with it winning, even if I'd obviously prefer mine.

Having said that, what makes you wanna get on Lab Meat over Agriculture Mechanization? I feel the latter is important and could cut a lot of the cost of reforestation, plus maybe increase the output of our industry plants. No solid evidence, but it feels sensible.

Not that I don't see the benefits of lab meat. More meat for everyone is a great thing to strive for. And while the Ranching Domes are helping with that, they are a long ways away from doing so right now.

Because Lab Meat is tissue cloning. And tissue cloning is needed for treating the Qatar Loyalists. Once we get industrial tissue cloning up it is a small step to use human tissue for medical treatment and back when we researched Tissue Replacement Therapy Development:

Ithillid said:
[ ] Tissue Replacement Therapy Development
While still far from being able to properly assemble large complex structures from scratch, smaller scale items, such as tissues and skin segments is a first stepping stone towards general replacements. While still potentially traumatic, being able to use a person's own cells as a baseline is a starting point for more complex systems.
(Progress 42/60: 20 resources per die)
[16]

Tissue replacement has been significantly problematic. While the science of making stem cells is well known, going back to the mid to late 20th century, it is still a fairly expensive process especially in man hours. The technique is fairly basic, pluripotent stem cells are capable of regenerating lost tissue by changing from their type to the type of cells surrounding them according to the complex blueprint of the human body encoded in the genome, a process which is still fairly badly understood. As is, the more tissue has to be replaced or the more complex the piece of tissue is, the more prone the process is for error, generating too many or too little nerve connections, muscle fibres growing in the wrong direction or wildly growing, non-cancerous bone protrusions. Beyond that, there is the critical problem of cell proliferation. Mass cell proliferation suffers from numerous problems-thermodynamic, genetic, sanitation, and simple nutrition. On a basic level, cells demand a diet of highly specific amino acids and micronutrients. Once, this was provided by fetal bovine serum, obtained from slaughterhouses. But without the massive cattle herds of the 20th century, this source is no longer available, and replacement growth serum is difficult to source without contamination and at reasonable cost. Cells also produce waste products-the faster they grow, the more waste they produce, and this requires that the mixture be bubbled or stirred. Both of these processes put shear forces on the cell membranes they were never meant to take, and over-mixing can lead to mass cell death in a goopy homogeneous mess. Both problems will need to be fixed before GDI has a usable means of replacing bulk tissues.

Ithillid said:
[ ] Tissue Replacement Therapy Development
While still far from being able to properly assemble large complex structures from scratch, smaller scale items, such as tissues and skin segments is a first stepping stone towards general replacements. While still potentially traumatic, being able to use a person's own cells as a baseline is a starting point for more complex systems.
(Progress 77/60: 20 resources per die)
[8]

While some of the problems of bulk cell culturing have not been solved, a scaled down version has been. By applying seed clusters of artificially created pluripotent stem cells layers of tissue can be effectively regrown. While it does tend to create areas of hypo and hypertrophic growth, it has been shown to work, with good binding to existing skin and muscle mass. At this point, it is not a cosmetic procedure but a lifesaving one.
While actual deployment will be the responsibility of the healthcare system and the Welfare Department, pushing ahead with funding has been a good investment, as it will begin to alleviate the problems being faced by the members of the Qatarite defectors that underwent Tiberium infusion treatments. It is now far more possible to undertake exploratory surgery to remove tiberium shards growing in their bodies, and provide rapid healing through stem cell seedings, easing recovery and reducing the risks involved.

we were told that we need Fetal Bovine Serum to get Tissue Replacement Therapy in full scale. If we get Lab Meat production on an industrial scale we will get the option to research a way of industrial production of Fetal Bovine Serum down the line.

So the sooner we get Lab Meat researched and then deployed the sooner we can get to Tissue Replacement. Oh and we should do Forgotten Studies this year so it can complement our Tissue Engineering.

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web

The Paladin

The Flesh is Weak

Altman be praised

The Paladin

The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web