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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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[X] Decommission at 6.5 years (low PS penalties if energy shortage)
 
Could we like double DAE somehow so we don't have to deal with rebuilding the Fusion reactors again?
 
Ithillid said:
[ ] Autodoc Systems Development
A next generation of medical automation, derived from CABAL's inner workings, the autodoc is likely to be a particularly scary project, with most Initiative citizens uncomfortable with the idea of an AI or EVA working on them, especially without direct human supervision. However, between their battlefield utility, and the need to prepare for workforce shortages in the coming decade, it is not so much a choice as a requirement.
(Progress 123/120: 30 resources per die) [16]

A GDI Autodoc is a small room, typically somewhat smaller than a prison cell, about three meters by two. The walls and ceiling are lined with a series of pop out panels, each one holding a set of surgical tools under sterile conditions, and allowing the tooling to be changed out without needing to be in view of the patient. Exposed tools, limbs, and the like, produce significantly higher stress responses in test patients, meaning that they have been, to the extent possible, deleted. Similarly, rather than using automated systems to, for example, intubate the patient if needed, a human has been tasked with the job, with most GDI patients responding far better to manual care.

All of this does require a combination of EVA and more standard programs, working in tandem with a set of robotic assistants, both stationary and mobile. Running an operating theater like this one requires a substantial amount of computing power, far more than even the remote operating theaters already in service. In fact, much of the equipment is cross compatible with those remote operating theaters, but there are a number of key differences, the biggest being that even though the robot is still operating on the patient, the knowledge that it is a person behind those arms is fundamentally comforting to many in the Initiative, compared to what is often thought of as being a cold, impersonal program.
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So how like Elevator Operators are these Autodoc Operators?
 
Shard said:
Could we like double DAE somehow so we don't have to deal with rebuilding the Fusion reactors again?
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DAE stands for Department of Alternate Energy. That generally means solar, wind, hydroelectric power. There's only so many places suitable for large large stretches of Solar panels that gets enough light, only certain areas which regularly get enough wind consistently, only so many rivers to dam.

It would be very nice to unlock more areas for that. But, it wouldn't surprise me if DAE is as good as it gets. Or, alternately, if we want better DAE we may need to build up far more cap goods production so that we can build more of our heavier fusion plants and other stoof.
 
[X] Decommission at 7 years (medium PS penalties if energy shortage)
[X] Decommission at 6.5 years (low PS penalties if energy shortage)

I feel like either option works, so I'll just vote both.

The thing with the Inhibitors makes sense when pointed out but... uh, oops? Upside, we were correct in BZ Inhibitors would reduce the chances of subsurface tib poking up in BZ areas!

RZBO is in the final stretch, so 1D to complete? I'm okay with dialing back RZ ops for a bit once the last RZBO is complete. Maybe Secure YZ in between Enhanced Harvest(/Forgotten Exp), IHG Refits/Refineries, last incomplete BZ Inhibitors?

The news that we got a partial refresh of Scrin gacha from a tower... I feel like we need to find more Towers to beat like pinatas. Maybe leave a billboard sign by Tower 19 to let Kane know that once we get done beating the other Towers like pinatas for tech, will be back to find a way to do that to his tower.

Simon_Jester said:
Oh nice! @Jprice , thanks! You can really see the pushes from the border offensive jabbing into the Red Zones. And holy mackerel it looks like ZOCOM in Central Europe has pushed through to the coast of the Adriatic around Trieste. Wow.

That's where we lost a battalion cut off from that natural one.

Given that RZ-1 was already formally divided by the Mediterranean, I guess that doesn't formally split it into two pieces, but it's a significant victory.

Nod in the West Australian Yellow Zone must have very mixed feelings about the way we're advancing along the south coast.
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Something I realized after your Adriatic mention... Slap a port down there. Run rail line from it up into the older BZ. We now have a path to get Tib and supplies in and out of the Med without running past Nod controlled YZ. ...We just have to contend with RZ coast effects at sea instead.

And seeing Australia... Operation Mulberry seems to be going, completely unintentionally!

Hilariously, we're back to the early days of no Green Zone, as we've absorbed it all into BZ now.

Also, @Jprice, good job! I was so happy to see a return of the maps.

Simon_Jester said:
That would definitely be a nice step forward, if we can clear the territory necessary. I don't think we can run a rail line through a Red Zone without abating the hell out of it first and clearing a corridor.
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Luckily, we have two massive BZ spikes deep into the NA Red Zone. Get those two connected together and we're good to go, but that's probably a new phase of RZBO or super glaciers... actually, I wouldn't be surprised if super glaciers were the reason they're both stopped at a spearpoint.

Simon_Jester said:
2-3 hulls per year. Well, that's not amazing, but it's still consequential.
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Think of it this way - G-drive ships aren't going to be too incredibly useful this Plan, since we'll be focused on Earth-Lunar orbit work due to the 20k pop in space goal, which is an area the fusion ships will thrive more. But next Plan.... We'll be starting that one with 3-5+ Conestogas or so, right? How do you think that'll affect something like asteroid belt mining or Mars bases as feasible concepts? Plus we'll be getting 2-3 a year during that Plan too, so it'll only be improving.

Simon_Jester said:
I was kind of mentally braced for it, because we're explicitly doing a ton of rollout of what are explicitly modern infernium disco ball lasers. If anything, it's a pleasant surprise that we could build that many air defense infernium lasers for 'only' half the STU cost of refitting the whole navy with the disco balls.
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I would say that the increased STU cost for the navy is not just refitting the navy with disco balls but also having the industrial capacity to handle all future needs. OTOH, its possible that after completing SADN that the disco ball refit drops to -1 STU, as the factories for those needs are no longer slipped in with the refits.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I was kind of mentally braced for it, because we're explicitly doing a ton of rollout of what are explicitly modern infernium disco ball lasers. If anything, it's a pleasant surprise that we could build that many air defense infernium lasers for 'only' half the STU cost of refitting the whole navy with the disco balls
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Naval Disco Balls has always been 1 STU.
 
bigking321 said:
So when we finish phase 4 and pay the STU cost will that remove the STU cost from the navel laser refit?

I think I remember it being said that the two projects would have a effect on each other.
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It does not remove the cost from the naval side of things. It is that there is a sub single STU cost for the first three, and it is being accounted for in the naval side of things, because I don't want to deal with fractional numbers.
 
Simon_Jester said:
You're slightly underestimating the problem here (though two dice on fusion plants should still mostly carry us).

Remember, we built most of the fusion plants in a gigantic surge during the Regency War- we finished five phases in six turns, actually. This was tapering off in early 2061, with as I recall a last phase in 2061Q4. As such, our effective deadline for getting most of that -156 Energy shortfall dealt with is about, oh... 2-3 turns, roughly less in practice than if we treated it as "we're gonna lose all that energy in one big thwack on the expiry date of the last plant."

I think Rakuhn did a good analysis on this, though something about it makes my brain hurt a bit.
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If the last CCF plant was completed in Q4 2061 then that was 2 years ago. which would be 8 turns not 2-3.

This would mean:
For the 7 year case that is 28-8=20 turns and therefore would mean an average 7.8 Energy per turn needed. 4 of that is covered by the DEA and therefore we would need 3.8 Energy per turn.
For the 6.5 year case that is 26-8=18 turns and therefore would mean an average 8.67 Energy per turn needed. 4 of that is covered by the DEA and therefore we would need 4.67 Energy per turn.

2CCF is approximately 4 dice needed per phase on average, and produces 19 Energy. Therefore, that is roughly 4.75 Energy per die. Therefore on average as long as we invested at least 1 die per turn into 2CCF, we should be good for both the 6.5 year and 7 year goals.

However, that does not leave any significant surplus and does not account for the surge of Energy likely needed for the relative bulge of CCF plants during the Regency War. Therefore we will likely need 2 dice per turn minimum on average to not only replace failing plants, but also keep up with new demand.

Edit:
[X] Decommission at 7 years (medium PS penalties if energy shortage)
 
TheFourthman said:
Agreed. I think Red zone should be the focus and then we need to look at how we implement Yellow Zones carefully. There's probably a few that won't set off Nod and we can grab those. After that? Need to be very diplomatic about it and not touch off a war. I know we've avoided Blue zone MARVs but we might actually need to look into them a bit before completing the network. Or this will all be moot due to TCN. Still I'd much rather take steps to have something in case the TCN just doesn't appear.

Also I should clarify. When I say enemy I don't just mean Nod. The aliens are still camped out there on the edge of the system. The assumption is that we'll need to out there and push them off. But nothing stops them from hitting us with a spoiling raid or deciding it's better to die on Earth than in their base. MARVs in this case are further complications, additional targets and backstops to clean up the damage such alien attacks would do to the biosphere. As I'd expect another incursion to see decades of push back against Tiberium to be setback.
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MARVs aren't actually all that relevant to the tiberium mitigation systems in place in the Blue Zones, I think. A MARV doesn't actually do anything a big fleet of conventional harvesters and buildings can't do, after all, so in a Blue Zone it's probably more economical to just do things that way.

And in a Blue Zone, if we need to build a tiberium inhibitor or some other fixed infrastructure, we just do; there's no point in attaching a giant supertank squadron to it.

Hell, not having to attach giant supertank squadrons might make it easier to get certain kinds of anti-tib infrastructure built in a Yellow Zone. The same factions within Nod that are now coordinating abatement with us might be open to letting us build Yellow Zone inhibitors in their territory, but they damn sure wouldn't let us build giant-ass fortresses garrisoned by squadrons of megatanks.

Shard said:
Could we like double DAE somehow so we don't have to deal with rebuilding the Fusion reactors again?
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Realistically, even if we could lock one die onto "autofusion" (as Blackstar's MNKh Quest would call it) or "the Department of Building Fusion Plants" (as we might call it), it wouldn't be enough. We'd still be building lots of 'manual' plants for our own use, defeating the purpose.

Replacing these plants is a big enough project that we really do need to budget for it, I think.

Phht said:
Luckily, we have two massive BZ spikes deep into the NA Red Zone. Get those two connected together and we're good to go, but that's probably a new phase of RZBO or super glaciers... actually, I wouldn't be surprised if super glaciers were the reason they're both stopped at a spearpoint.
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Well yeah. Although us actually pushing the corridor through is going to be contingent on us actually pushing the Red Zones back. If they get high rolls for the next few turns, we don't have a corridor.

Think of it this way - G-drive ships aren't going to be too incredibly useful this Plan, since we'll be focused on Earth-Lunar orbit work due to the 20k pop in space goal, which is an area the fusion ships will thrive more. But next Plan.... We'll be starting that one with 3-5+ Conestogas or so, right? How do you think that'll affect something like asteroid belt mining or Mars bases as feasible concepts? Plus we'll be getting 2-3 a year during that Plan too, so it'll only be improving.
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We already have a research base on Mars and, as of when SCED Quest last updated, were working on assembling a research base around Venus as I recall. Just having a few G-drive ships to service and expand those bases regularly on a frequent operations cycle would make a significant difference well before the end of the current Plan.

We just need to find a new QM for SCED Quest and get caught up... I'm honestly tempted but I feel like I might prove incompetent or (less likely, but somehow) controversial.

Ithillid said:
Naval Disco Balls has always been 1 STU.
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[blinks]

Well, I feel foolish now. I wonder what I was conflating...

doruma1920 said:
If the last CCF plant was completed in Q4 2061 then that was 2 years ago. which would be 8 turns not 2-3.
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That was me writing carelessly. The sentence should have been written:

"Our deadline for finishing the bulk of the second generation replacement reactors is two or three turns before the theoretical time at which the last plant hits its end-of-life date."

Basically, the shutdowns, whenever they occur, will be costing us two -16 Energy thwacks spaced a few turns apart, then -16 Energy/turn continuously for five turns out of six in a row, and then another two thwacks spaced a few turns apart. It forces us to frontload our construction efforts a bit compared to what would be the case if the shutdowns were purely linear and "smooth."

However, that does not leave any significant surplus and does not account for the surge of Energy likely needed for the relative bulge of CCF plants during the Regency War. Therefore we will likely need 2 dice per turn minimum on average to not only replace failing plants, but also keep up with new demand.
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That relative bulge is what I was talking about, and I'm in agreement with the conclusion, having already arrived at it through somewhat less rigorous means but closely parallel reasoning.
 
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