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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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For the record. I'm once again making note of my worries about the AA dice and Erewhon dice in orbital. Particularly on The gravitic and fusion shipyard.

Good odds of completing sure, but, also a chance they don't. And if they don't. then that's 40R and two dice (three if we count the AA as the two bureaucracy dice) used up, for no results. And requiring further dice and funds next turn. And also, delaying pretty important bays in the form of gravitic and fusion, which are there to help with space stuff.

It costs very little, essentially just some progress. To swap two orbital dice from Columbia onto the bays, guaranteeing the bays, no matter what. With the AA and Erewhon dice going back onto Columbia to help push some progress there.

Don't get me wrong. If the bays finish on AA and Erewhon, great, bonus progress to columbia from orbital bonuses.

But in my opinion that's not important compared to the risk of not finishing two very important bays, when we could instead, guarantee their completion.

Edit: Also. Others have pointed out the issues in pumping loads of extra free dice (and other dice besides) into shocking orbital.

And sure, some plans include hospital, in case of accident. But, in this instance, I think the spaceport bay to control the likely amount of shuttles may be a better option. Prevention instead of cure.
 
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BoSPaladin said:
For the record. I'm once again making note of my worries about the AA dice and Erewhon dice in orbital. Particularly on The gravitic and fusion shipyard.

Good odds of completing sure, but, also a chance they don't. And if they don't. then that's 40R and two dice (three if we count the AA as the two bureaucracy dice) used up, for no results. And requiring further dice and funds next turn. And also, delaying pretty important bays in the form of gravitic and fusion, which are there to help with space stuff.

It costs very little, essentially just some progress. To swap two orbital dice from Columbia onto the bays, guaranteeing the bays, no matter what. With the AA and Erewhon dice going back onto Columbia to help push some progress there.
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What it comes down to is which we need more: the certainty of success on the bays, or the guarantee of 2*39 Progress on the big stations.

2*39 Progress is a sizeable fraction of an Orbital die all by itself, since the mean expected roll on those for station construction is, as I recall, 89.5. So that's effectively 44% of a die in opportunity cost, expended to gain this certainty.

By contrast, there is something like a 15% or so chance of losing an Orbital die to failure on each shipyard. By swapping out the AA/E die for an Orbital die in each case, we sacrifice 44% or so of the Progress boost from a die, in exchange for avoiding 13-17% chance of wasting a die.

It doesn't seem remotely worth it to me.

Edit: Also. Others have pointed out the issues in pumping loads of extra free dice (and other dice besides) into shocking orbital.

And sure, some plans include hospital, in case of accident. But, in this instance, I think the spaceport bay to control the likely amount of shuttles may be a better option. Prevention instead of cure.
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I don't think that the most likely point of failure here is going to be space traffic control. I think it's going to be the industrial work itself.
 
Simon_Jester said:
It doesn't seem remotely worth it to me.
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Assuming in that scenario the bays complete, as they probably will. You're correct. Not worth it.

But if they fail. Well. It's easy to prevent any chance at all of it failing. Why take the risk?

the few points from the orbital bonus aren't 'that' important. We're not 'that' short on free dice that we need to eke out maximum utility from each and every point. And, if it does fail, and we end up needing to use more dice, then, well, the plan to save dice actually uses more dice.
 
BoSPaladin said:
Assuming in that scenario the bays complete, as they probably will. You're correct. Not worth it.

But if they fail. Well. It's easy to prevent any chance at all of it failing. Why take the risk?
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Because you're trading, roughly speaking, a 44% risk of needing to spend an extra die on a station at some indefinite future time against a 13% or 17% risk of needing to spend an extra die on a shipyard bay in 2063Q3.

You're doing a variation on Pascal's Wager here, and it's subject to the same problem as Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager posits that you should be an observant Catholic because if there's even a small chance that Catholicism is correct, being a good Catholic saves you from eternal torment. One major problem with this is that it assumes there cannot possibly be any other religion that might be objectively correct, and under which being an observant Catholic is bad, because Zeus or whoever will objectively punish you in Hades for that or something.

It's easy to make any course of action seem like the obvious correct move if you only count the upsides of taking the action and only the downsides of not taking it.

...

Here, you're saying "well, you should do X, because why take the chance of something bad happening because you didn't do X?" But doing X has costs. So I can equally well ask you "why take the larger chance of something every bit as bad happening because you did do X?"
 
[X] Plan Attempting Strategic Defense and Inhibition

Hesitate between this one and Karachi shield and chose it because Karachi shield will necessitate to disperse our HI die between alloy, repuls and fusion for the next few turns and I can already imagine the drama between posters on how to manage it.
Let's finish alloy first and we will see at that moment if we can do repuls or if we need to do Boston before.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I view this as a position that, ultimately, has its roots in "never compromise our values, even in the face of Armageddon."

...

But at the same time, we are dealing with a situation where in-character we face Armageddon, and if there is ever, ever a situation in which accepting workplace fatalities as the cost of doing business is not-wrong, it would be in the case of averting human extinction or ensuring that in the future there will be any place for humans to live at all.
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Look, I think you're seeing complex moral issues where there just aren't any. The benefit of doing the Starbound promise is that some small number of Starbound politicians will like the Treasury more. The cost... is that because we are in an extinction event, the number of people who can build space stations is strictly limited and we have great difficulty training more. That's not a moral absolutionist stance. That's just basic cost/benefit analysis.

The scenario we're facing here just does not fit for a complex morality lesson.

[X] Plan Karachi Shield Alloys
[X] Plan Attempting to Storm the Heavens, OSHA Compliant

Edit: This post doesn't really make my point and is unclear, and I just... am not in the mood to try and fix it, sorry.
 
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Oleg-14191 said:
Another big question- should we go for phase 6 of Alloys?
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Not sure...

It wouldn't give another discount. But it would be the capstone of the action for narrative stuff and have a effect on mining.

Without knowing exactly what that means it's hard to know if it's worth it or not.

But underground tiberium is becoming a major concern, especially with the prediction algorithm nat 1 frightening the public about it.

So anything that improves our ability to combat underground tiberium is probably worth pursuing.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Okay. So what happened was, I did all the REST of the edits (including removing the Military AA die and updating the budget cost) on Attempting Strategic Defense and Inhibition, but then actually updated the Bureaucracy section for Attempting To Storm The Heavens.

I believe it's fixed now. Checking would be welcome.

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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Budget: 1240/1300 R (only 1220 RpT income) (will go down by 90 RpT to 1130) (likely to rise by ~25 RpT from the border offensive to 1155-ish) (this leaves ~1215 R in the piggy bank for next turn) FREE DICE: 3 on Heavy Industry 1 on Orbital 2 on Military [X] Plan Attempting Strategic...
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As Doruma has mentioned, both my plans also pour 10 Capital Goods into the private/civilian economy, tripling the previous stream that we had been running for the past two years or so courtesy of the negotiations we made with the FMP.

It seems very likely that for the private sector to even be able to assimilate such a large infusion of capital goods, it will need more startup capital, so the increased grant money likely won't go amiss.
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Simon_Jester said:
Okay. So what happened was, I did all the REST of the edits (including removing the Military AA die and updating the budget cost) on Attempting Strategic Defense and Inhibition, but then actually updated the Bureaucracy section for Attempting To Storm The Heavens.

I believe it's fixed now. Checking would be welcome.

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Budget: 1240/1300 R (only 1220 RpT income) (will go down by 90 RpT to 1130) (likely to rise by ~25 RpT from the border offensive to 1155-ish) (this leaves ~1215 R in the piggy bank for next turn) FREE DICE: 3 on Heavy Industry 1 on Orbital 2 on Military [X] Plan Attempting Strategic...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com forums.sufficientvelocity.com


As Doruma has mentioned, both my plans also pour 10 Capital Goods into the private/civilian economy, tripling the previous stream that we had been running for the past two years or so courtesy of the negotiations we made with the FMP.

It seems very likely that for the private sector to even be able to assimilate such a large infusion of capital goods, it will need more startup capital, so the increased grant money likely won't go amiss.
I view this as a position that, ultimately, has its roots in "never compromise our values, even in the face of Armageddon."

Which is respectable, and now as I look forward to perhaps the first large block of uninterrupted free time I've had in the past twenty-one hours or so, I'm thinking of writing a version of my space-heavy plan that does, indeed, prioritize the hospital bay and invests just as heavily in space without doing things according to the template Starbound desires.

But at the same time, we are dealing with a situation where in-character we face Armageddon, and if there is ever, ever a situation in which accepting workplace fatalities as the cost of doing business is not-wrong, it would be in the case of averting human extinction or ensuring that in the future there will be any place for humans to live at all.

We do, after all, have a steady stream of fatalities from fighting tiberium (e.g. the entire ZOCOM battalion that got cut off and tibbed in the Balkans), and of course military casualties from fighting Nod, and we do not cease either of those undertakings. We do make efforts to minimize fatalities, but if we were prepared to accept doing less, our fatalities would be still lower, and yet GDI does not do so.

As far as anyone in GDI now knows, laying groundwork for space evacuation may prove just as necessary to the survival of GDI in particular and humanity in general as fighting Nod or fighting tiberium.

I consider higher injury and disruption rates to be a likely consequence of Attempting To Storm The Heavens and the follow-on plans that would be required to finish the job. I'm just going to be candid about that. I don't expect everyone to approve of paying that price, and indeed I am undertaking to prepare a plan draft that doesn't pay it.
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Simon you double posted the same post only the first time a part of it was cut off.
 
Derpmind said:
Look, I think you're seeing complex moral issues where there just aren't any. The benefit of doing the Starbound promise is that some small number of Starbound politicians will like the Treasury more. The cost... is that because we are in an extinction event, the number of people who can build space stations is strictly limited and we have great difficulty training more. That's not a moral absolutionist stance. That's just basic cost/benefit analysis.

The scenario we're facing here just does not fit for a complex morality lesson.
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If the labor force capable of performing useful work on space stations is small and infeasible to expand, then the "exodus to space" vote was always a trap option and I don't know how we're managing 100 RpT worth of moon mines and orbital refinery infrastructure that we didn't have seven years ago.

Conversely, I do think Starbound actually believes their own party platform, which is that humanity isn't going to survive if it can't evacuate into space because we have no means of stopping tiberium indefinitely.
 
Simon_Jester said:
If the labor force capable of performing useful work on space stations is small and infeasible to expand, then the "exodus to space" vote was always a trap option and I don't know how we're managing 100 RpT worth of moon mines and orbital refinery infrastructure that we didn't have seven years ago.

Conversely, I do think Starbound actually believes their own party platform, which is that humanity isn't going to survive if it can't evacuate into space because we have no means of stopping tiberium indefinitely.
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What is even your point here? Are you just being contrary or what?
 
Derpmind said:
What is even your point here? Are you just being contrary or what?
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That when it comes to the question of "how hasty should GDI be being in its drive to build and develop a space presence and colonize space, in light of the long-term threat to human survival," I do think this is a real and valid moral quandary.

That I'm sincerely conflicted about what the morally right answer is, especially within the context of someone who doesn't think the TCN is a realistic option, such as anyone currently living in GDI in-story.

That I don't think it's a good idea to try and paint the narrative in such tones that one side is obviously right and the other side should obviously be ashamed of themselves. Sometimes, issues are complex enough that the best way forward is for people who disagree to treat each other with respect, and that extended morality arguments in which one side is convinced that the other is morally bankrupt may be counterproductive.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
That when it comes to the question of "how hasty should GDI be being in its drive to build and develop a space presence and colonize space, in light of the long-term threat to human survival," I do think this is a real and valid moral quandary.
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That is not what I was trying to say with my posts. Please re-read the following:
Derpmind said:
If we should or shouldn't go all-in on free dice in Orbital is a question that merits debate, but doing so without building the Hospita Bay is just dumb.
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Simon_Jester said:
Let's just say that to me, there's some overlap between the arguments for "anything but hospital next is just dumb" and "we really shouldn't be rushing space colonization if there are risks."
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I never said a word towards your second argument. (I'm even voting for the plan you put out.) I'm not saying "avoid all risk", I'm saying we should mitigate the risks we take. If you're gonna jump off a cliff, at least bring a parachute.

If you can't accept that as its own argument, then we're just going to keep talking past each other.
 
I think I may be cueing off language like "jump off a cliff" and interpreting it as "do something reckless and stupid and self-destructive and above all rather pointless.
 
The argument that makes sense to me, here, is "we should push space colonization, even at the risk of casualties among the workers, but we should do everything we can to mitigate those".

Simon_Jester said:
If the labor force capable of performing useful work on space stations is small and infeasible to expand, then the "exodus to space" vote was always a trap option and I don't know how we're managing 100 RpT worth of moon mines and orbital refinery infrastructure that we didn't have seven years ago.
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To counterpoint this: our space construction labor force is small and slow to expand. It's entirely feasible, just, with our current priorities, it's not as big as we would like, and the hurried activity involved with 6+ dice put towards a single construction site tends to lead towards increased injuries.
My assumption is that the "exodus to space" option would have had us expanding said construction labor force earlier, more vigorously, and also accepting more casualties as 'normal'.
Kinda like we do for the fight against Tiberium, where it took losing an entire battalion to slow the assault on the Red Zones.
 
Lightwhispers said:
The argument that makes sense to me, here, is "we should push space colonization, even at the risk of casualties among the workers, but we should do everything we can to mitigate those".
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That's where I tend to see the issue as turning, well, foggy. There's a good reason I came up with Attempting to Storm the Heavens, OSHA Compliant; my own sympathies are fairly close to that position you just expressed.

It's just... very much an open question rather than a closed question, in my mind. Something that the nature of the game and its mechanics mean we wouldn't realistically have a way of knowing anyway. If we're trying to maximize how many millions of people we can get off-world in survivable, sustainable conditions before tiberium crumples the Earth up, do we best accomplish that by diverting effort and rearranging effort to improve safety? Or is there a point of diminishing returns where that stops being the best way to do it?

History presents plenty of cautionary tales of asinine tyrants working people to death for their own pride and accomplishing less than a more merciful approach would yield. But at the same time, there does have to be a point of diminishing returns... and evacuation is a concern.

As I've said, I'm just really conflicted about all this, and that's a big part of why I'm posting multiple plans that approach this issue very differently.

To counterpoint this: our space construction labor force is small and slow to expand. It's entirely feasible, just, with our current priorities, it's not as big as we would like, and the hurried activity involved with 6+ dice put towards a single construction site tends to lead towards increased injuries.
My assumption is that the "exodus to space" option would have had us expanding said construction labor force earlier, more vigorously, and also accepting more casualties as 'normal'.
Kinda like we do for the fight against Tiberium, where it took losing an entire battalion to slow the assault on the Red Zones.
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I'm sure it would have. On the other hand, I think Starbound is trying to push us in that direction precisely because that's what they see as necessary.

Arguably, the OOC knowledge that the TCN exists and we have some reasonable hope of obtaining it is the main thing that militates against that viewpoint, because it'd be a terrible, terrible tragedy to lose hundreds or thousands of lives rush-building stuff that won't be needed to save humanity.

And of course, Starbound's never heard of the TCN and would consider it a wildly speculative pipe dream.
 
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