Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Simon_Jester · Jul 10, 2023

Strunkriidiisk said:
Need, no, but as you've noted it's looking like a phased project now so it's not like the effort will be wasted. Frankly I don't really think any amount or distribution of space dice is really 'wasted' this turn, as long as people are aiming to finish Shala's core. We're stuck spinning our wheels for the moment until lunar colonies finally pop (which I could have sworn weren't reliant on Shala as well as Columbia, but ehh) and there's a limit to how much we can do to 'prepare the ground' so to speak.

Speaking of lunar prep though, I'm actually not sure how much the Spaceport Bay will help with that. The description really seems like it's not going to provide discounts to at least the early stages:

This really sounds like a logistical module that'll really come into play once we already have a foundational presence on Luna, not something that'll discount initial construction.

Maybe. On the other hand even Moonbase Phase 1 or whatever it's called is probably going to be a serious construction project in its own right. And if it's not- well, suppose we have to get up to Phase 4 before the population's respectable. Then we'll have to work our way up to Phase 4 (or whatever) anyway to reach the space population target. And we may further want to expand other lunar infrastructure, such as water mines or conventional mines, once the moon base is at or near its final target size.

I think we'll turn out to be glad we had the spaceport bay constructed quite early on. And its bonuses may apply the same way things like the station bay did to the stations- so a cost reduction early in the project may be a lot more impactful than one that only applies when we get around to Phase 3 or Phase 4 of a five-phase project.

With regards to extra dice on the species restoration bay, I'm coming around to your view on the matter to a limited degree. While I still consider it to be overkill, it's not going to be truly wasted dice as long as we don't overindulge on Stage 2 of the project, given the premise that it deserves investment in Orbital alongside the population target in the first place, which I accept.

Strunkriidiisk said:
The bewildering thing is allocating any dice to stockpiles at all.

Existing stockpiles were laid down when housing patterns were a bit different (we were just settling in the Steel Vanguard refugees, after all). Furthermore, GDI policy, which we've had a fair hand in shaping ourselves, is headed for probable serious war with al-Isfahani, whose Nod faction is a nuclear power. Even if the war goes "well," we may be looking at mass-casualty nuclear attacks or other WMD strikes on major GDI population centers here or there. BZ-4 and BZ-18 are particularly likely to be targeted, but if al-Isfahani gets creative with nuclear missile submarines (and we are told he has them) then bad days could happen anywhere in the world. SADN is good but it's not perfect and there are potential WMD that bypass it.

So we could be facing major national disasters of a kind that extra food stockpiles would help with. And while we have lots of exciting things to do with Agriculture, few of them are so vital that we'd begrudge a few dice spent on something else if it might make hundreds of thousands of people's lives better in a reasonably likely emergency situation in the near future.

Similar logic promotes us deploying autodocs and the second phase of Regional Hospital Expansion in the next three turns, frankly.

@Rakuhn was the one who first pointed most of this out, and frankly she had a good point, or at least I for one am convinced.

BOTcommander said:
Inferno gel is my second most important project after space

I think MSH (?) was right to speculate that the most likely explanation for inferno gel becoming 'apolitical' (no longer having a PS penalty) is that it turned into a meme, and Initiative First is trying to score points off "setting Noddies on fire" becoming a meme people laugh about, and that this sells well with GDI as a whole and baited the tiny Open Hand Party into opposition.

Because 'burning Noddies' does make a good meme.

Derpmind · Jul 10, 2023

Ithillid said:
When it comes to dealing with the crisis, the most immediate one is getting seriously moving on Boston and Aberdeen and getting on the AI train for both labor and dice. Nuuk, and more broadly automation is the second option, but it will be somewhat more limited. Third and finally, wet AI.

Thinking on this, Boston currently costs ~16.5 average dice, and this turn we're probably putting 4 dice into it. With Repulsorplates finishing up, we could scale that up to 6 dice a turn for the next two turns after. Meaning we could finish Boston in Q3, leaving Q4 to try to use its advanced computer tech and/or crash through Aberdeen. Point is, we're not that far away from finishing Boston and could speed it up to finish three turns from now instead of four.

Compared to that, Nuuk is waaay more expensive, and Wet AI has... issues, even if we're using cloned neural tissue to not be outright evil. So I think we should keep going with Boston.

MightbeaMimic · Jul 10, 2023

Wet AI is definitely an interesting potential solution. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a good one

Simon_Jester · Jul 10, 2023

@Ithillid

I once suggested a project, probably Bureaucracy, along the lines of:

Mothball First Generation CC Fusion Plants

Instead of waiting for the designated end of service life shutdown, the newest generation of first generation fusion reactors could be taken offline early and redesignated as standby backup power generation facilities to supplement the existing battery backups of the grid.

(-16 Energy, +?? Energy Reserve, may or may not provide +1 Labor, scheduled 2068Q4 shutdown of the Phase 9 Gen-1 power plants is brought forward to today)

...

It seems like a fairly logical move for GDI to try. Do you think we might see that on the docket some day? I'm not asking for it to be added to the docket now, because you'd probably want time to think it over and because there are other far more popular options right now.

Hunter531 said:
Nuuk is too expensive for me. Sure, it's a lot of Cap Goods, but North Boston should be enough to sate our needs for quite some time. We don't need the bucketload of Cap Goods from Nuuk as well. All that would do would add more political pressure to release said goods to the private sector. I'd much rather do Aberdeen than Nuuk, and would prefer doing neither to both options.

I'm in favor of transitioning to one project or the other... after we finish North Boston, which has waited quite long enough.

Calvin said:
I really don't think we need Inferno Gel either, even for spin-off technology.

Also noticing that the resource crops time out in 2066, so we might want to do those.

Interestingly, I speculate that those may time out not because they lose value or popularity, but because they go to the private sector. Given reasonably good access to basic Capital Goods stuff (like robots for automation), growing tarberries in a big hydroponics setup probably isn't all that difficult. A major co-op/company/enterprise/whatever could likely fill that role well enough, so if we wait until 2066 to expand production from the state-owned enterprises, the niche may already be getting filled.

As an additional question, why bother with Cosmetic Biosculpting when it might make more sense to guarantee that one of the Visitor implant projects succeeds? I've been out of the loop for a while, and I do understand that this isn't just a numbers game, but the labor shortage seems like a more pressing issue than genetically engineered catgirls.

There's a desire to finish projects in a timely manner. Personally, I think that rushing implant techs may not be such a great idea, since actually getting them into service is a thing that'll take some fiddling and refinement, and I'm skeptical that the benefits will be so overwhelming that getting the +Labor trickle one quarter sooner or later will make that much difference. I'm especially skeptical that it will have that effect with the physical prostheses.

I suppose Visitortech robot eyes might matter more, because we've got a large demographic of otherwise able-bodied blind people with laser injuries who fought in Tib War III (that is to say, were of military age at that time, that is to say, were born around 2017-30 or so, that is to say, are now 34-47 years old and would really help with the workforce).

Hunter531 said:
It actually makes a certain amount of sense. I can't imagine that Open Hand is limiting their anti-Inferno Gel campaign to us. Their colleagues also likely got hit with some lobbying, and Inferno Gel is actually pretty easy to lobby against. We already have plenty of non war crime ways to disable vehicles, so it's easy to frame the question as whether or not you want GDI to commit war crimes.

Unless you're a member of the extremist side of IF, the answer to that question will almost certainly be "no". If the project had finished development and shown promise in handling situations our current anti-vehicle methods aren't good at, it could be a different story, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

Yes, but it used to be that politicians found inferno gel unpopular- that's why it cost us minus 5 PS to develop it.

Now, the politicians seem to have decided that inferno gel is okay, and we are no longer charged PS for developing it. This suggests that either Initiative First launched a successful campaign to make it more popular among the political class, or that a lot of people out there are saying "if Open Hand is against it, I'm for it."

mmgaballah said:
the GDI already uses incendiary weapons , this is just a better incendiary , the open hand being former Nod IE the guys who developed and use it means they have no right going about citing it as wrong especially since Nod still makes use of Inferno gel , for the sheer self righteousness offends me and likely a lot of people too

I don't think Open Hand-ists identify as "the kind of Nod person who invented and approves of using inferno gel."

It bears remembering that "Nod" is at this point a religion, a country, a political ideology, and practically an ethnicity all at once. A person can be "Nod" by any or even all of those definitions, and still think using certain kinds of weapons against people is wrong, or even was always wrong.

Derpmind said:
-[] Burrito 4/4 dice 60R
--[] Administrative Assistance (Military) 2 dice auto
--[] Transfer Funding to InOps 1 die auto
--[] Predictive Modeling Management 1 die auto
-[X] Total: 1290R/1300R + 65R in reserve. Reserve goes to 75R.

This plan has a superheavy focus on doing new science projects, while still keeping the wheels turning on important projects and stuff.

Has stealth disruptors. Doesn't have inferno gel. Calls Bureaucracy section "Burrito."

I like it.

It's a pity about North Boston progress; if it was me I'd probably cut back one or even both fusion power dice to make North Boston go faster, since we're actually doing pretty well on Energy surplus even given how much we'll be needing in 2066-67.

But still, I like it.

[X] Plan Give Me Science!

Derpmind said:
Thinking on this, Boston currently costs ~16.5 average dice, and this turn we're probably putting 4 dice into it. With Repulsorplates finishing up, we could scale that up to 6 dice a turn for the next two turns after. Meaning we could finish Boston in Q3, leaving Q4 to try to use its advanced computer tech and/or crash through Aberdeen. Point is, we're not that far away from finishing Boston and could speed it up to finish three turns from now instead of four.

Compared to that, Nuuk is waaay more expensive, and Wet AI has... issues, even if we're using cloned neural tissue to not be outright evil. So I think we should keep going with Boston.

Per this, I'd like to suggest switching one or both fusion dice to North Boston. Building up that ongoing Energy surplus is important, but it's already pretty thick and we do have the capacity to accelerate it.

MightbeaMimic · Jul 10, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
I'm in favor of transitioning to one project or the other... after we finish North Boston, which has waited quite long enough.

Yeah, we should start putting dice into Nuuk as soon as Boston is finally complete. It's worth noting that even if a lot of the extra cap goods go to the private sector that doesn't make them wasted. More cap goods to the private sector is likely to mean a more manpower efficient private sector, freeing up people to either work for us or to expand the private sector (which is already being useful) further

Ithillid · Jul 10, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
It seems like a fairly logical move for GDI to try. Do you think we might see that on the docket some day? I'm not asking for it to be added to the docket now, because you'd probably want time to think it over and because there are other far more popular options right now.

It is. Just something where I didn't want to add it this turn, because I was already pushing to try to get the current update out and was not wanting to add even more options.

MSH · Jul 10, 2023

It's worth noting that we can divert from fusion investment fairly widely. Even with no usage of liquid tib, we can get +30 energy for an average of 9 tib dice by doing red zone refits.

And I'm still convinced that we can make liquid tib power more safe and politically accepted with the use of stasis boxes.

Simon_Jester · Jul 10, 2023

Ithillid said:
It is. Just something where I didn't want to add it this turn, because I was already pushing to try to get the current update out and was not wanting to add even more options.

That is absolutely fine and I 100% respect that and it makes sense.

Karugus said:
Moreover, it's likely Open Hand's argument is rooted in is based off how NOD deployed Inferno Gel rather than how GDI intends to use it in largely anti material and anti-armor roles.

Real talk, if you give soldiers a devastatingly effective incendiary weapon they will use it as an antipersonnel weapon even if it's nominally antimateriel.

Large caliber sniper rifles are a classic example.

If we deploy this thing on a meaningful scale (and with the Department of Munitions that's pretty much inevitable once it's developed), it's going to end up used on targets other than tanks and biomonsters.

FFS I think the head of the Open Hand party is former Black Hand.

Crucible has been pretty open and above-board for years about how their thinking has changed very significantly. I frankly doubt they were a front line power armor flamethrower combatant during Tib War III when the Black Hand threw inferno gel around so enthusiastically themselves, given their age.

I get that for GDI's internal politics this may be an issue, but I don't think they're out of line here.

mmgaballah said:
I object , the army wants new gear now not in another 15 years , our tanks are already better than what Nod has to offer so the next gen is gonna be even better so their isn't enough return for us to waste more time to make them even better by waiting more...

Including versus excluding these technologies may change by 5-10 years the date on the back end when these tanks become obsolete due to Nod having rolled out a better model. The Predator's obsolescence isn't caused by Nod outgunning it now; it's caused by the fact that we have no realistic way to give it superiority over what Nod's going to roll out next. The next generation of Centurion light mecha or other Nod combat vehicles is going to be more powerful than the current generation, and we aren't going to be able to keep upgrading the Predator to match it.

The Paladin MBT-7 successor tank will be able to match those next-generation Nod vehicles, so we're probably good up through the early 2070s either way. The question is whether Nod starts pulling ahead of us in, say, ten years or in twenty. Note that the Predator is a pre-2046 design, probably significantly pre-2046 because things like railguns were originally just an optional upgrade to it. It's lasted us twenty years in frontline service because it was a damn good tank when it was first deployed. If the Paladin is to last similarly long, it needs to have a strong foundation. If its shield generators are weak, or its armor is weak by the standards of a 2075 design, and it can't be upgraded to the new stadnard easily, we're going to be under pressure to do the MBT-8 development all over again and it's oging to be a huge pain.

Furthermore, If the tanks are "already better than what Nod has to offer" then there's no rush to get them into development and waiting 3-6 months to start the project is not a major cost. Besides which...

, third our tanks while good are long in the teeth so best replace them now while we have the advantage rather than later when they are obsolete and at a disadvantage , forth its gonna take a long time to build and refit the needed factories and even longer for those factories to produce the needed tanks so the sooner we get started the better rather than do the same mistake as we did with the navy ,

...We literally do not have enough Military dice to do major tank factory refits during the current Four Year Plan along with other high priority actions. Realistically, deploying these tanks is a project for 2066-69, not 2064-65. Therefore, a delay in the development cycle is not likely to impact when the average GDI soldier on the front lines actually starts seeing these tanks in combat.

we can still give them all the new stuff later via upgrades and their is always the generation of tanks after this once we get mass effect tech to stuff in all the toys

We factually can't give the tanks the shield and armor upgrades "later via upgrades" for reasons that have already been covered.

MSH said:
It's worth noting that we can divert from fusion investment fairly widely. Even with no usage of liquid tib, we can get +30 energy for an average of 9 tib dice by doing red zone refits.

We have so much else to do in Tiberium as a category that I'm very hesitant to divert resources to the ion power refits if we can avoid it. Every die we spend working on ion power is a die not spent on abatement or scaling up STU production. So as long as we can choose between getting 19 Energy for 3.5-ish Heavy Industry dice and getting 10 Energy for 3 Tiberium dice, I'll choose the former every time if I can.

And I'm still convinced that we can make liquid tib power more safe and politically accepted with the use of stasis boxes.

I'm not clear on how.

Derpmind · Jul 10, 2023

Ithillid said:
[ ] Tiberium Vein Mines (Stage 11)
While no longer positive in terms of abatement resources freed up, vein mines still represent a significant way for the Initiative to increase its Tiberium mining output without either requiring significant conflicts with the Brotherhood of Nod, or putting its men and material at significant risk in the red zones of the world.
(Progress 0/165: 20 resources per die) (Additional Income Trickle [25-35]) (-2 Capital Goods)

@Ithillid I've found a few more errors in this turn's update. This should be 4/165.

[ ] Improved Hewlett-Gardener Refits (Phase 2)
While there are now IHG plants in production, and a number of smaller and secondary plants in the middle of the conversion process, there is still a significant amount of work to be done before even touching the grandiose assemblages of Jeddah, Chicago, or similar.
(Progress 65/210: 35 resources per die) (Converts 450 processing capacity)

As others have pointed out, this should be at Phase 3. It should also have the (-1 Labor) from the nat 1 and be at 2/200.

[ ] Cosmetic Biosculpting (Tech)
While something of an affectation, there are a wide array of options for GDI to begin programs to make people more comfortable in their bodies. Although obviously limited by bone structure, muscle mass, and the need to avoid making harmful changes, the program would be a significant step in both reconstructive and cosmetic assistance for many of GDI's citizens.
(Progress 184/345: 30 resources per die) (+1 Health)

This should be at 194/345.

Lightwhispers said:
-[] Improved Hewlett Gardener Refits (Phase 3) 12/200 2 dice 70R 56%, 3 dice 105R 97%

@Lightwhispers I've also found a few errors in this turn's Array. This should be at 2/200.

-[] Lunar Mining Projects 0/195 2 dice 40R 40%, 3 dice 60R 93%

This should be at 0/185.

-[] Initiative Laser Systems Deployment 0/555 5 dice 150R 2%, 6 dice 180R 24%, 7 dice 210R 65%, 8 dice 240R 91%

This has been split into three phases at 0/185 each.

-[] Ground Forces Zone Armor (Set 2) (Phase 1) 0/285 3 dice 60R 32%, 4 dice 80R 83%, 5 dice 100R 99%

This should be at 16/285.

Simon_Jester · Jul 10, 2023

Terran Allias said:
So what plan puts the most into space? Again, I really want to hedge my bets.

It's kind of awkward right now. Actually hitting the space population target (the thing that has us scrambling to ultra-fund Orbital during the current Plan) is gated behind us completing Shala, but two dice is enough that Shala is effectively certain to complete this quarter. We can't start the next Big Project until Shala is done, so we've kind of got a quarter where all our other Orbital dice are basically just fucking around doing hopefully semi-helpful-relevant things.

It's kind of a downtime for Orbital, and arguably that's just as well because relaxing the Orbital dice may let the construction crews get some rest and so on.

Hunter531 said:
Unless Nod suddenly starts using large amounts of automated vehicles, any use of Inferno Gel by GDI will involve people dying horrifically painful deaths. That's not something that can be dodged around.

It should be noted that for this purpose, the 'Gana' biomonsters probably count as automated vehicles, and are an obvious candidate for inferno gel use. We have real problems stopping them with infantry-scale weapons, and while they pretty clearly don't have nearly the same reactions to fire that a normal animal would, the biomonsters are no more immune to having flames take out their eye/camera/whatevers or their internals cooked by having the external temperature become unmanageable than a tank is to having its optics or crew taken out the same way.

I'm willing to accede to the "can we just NOT" movement here because we have so, so, so many things we want to do and because it seems clear that IF is running a campaign that reminds me of the modern far right, saying "I resent your moralizing so much that I'm going to set myself up to commit atrocities just to spite you," and I don't like it.

But I do see a valid niche for application of the weapon; I just don't think it'll stay restricted to that.

Shadows said:
I dunno, I think that would need to be a thread thing. Would folks be interested in us losing ~80 progress on Gov-As this turn in favor of ~90 progress on 3 different refit projects starting next turn? I don't personally much care. I just know (most) folks are loathe to give up dice.

For now, I'd rather not, because only two of the projects that would get 30 points are nearly as valuable to me as Governor-A (given that one of them IS Governor-A).

I'm not yet a voter for your plan, though, but I'm thinking about it.

ninjakirito6 said:
I really don't see the point in deciding whether or not to use Inferno Gel based on whether it makes you icky or not.

Major differences:

1) Incendiary munitions are particularly problematic when combined with bombardment weapons, more so than direct fire things like our railguns or even how Nod uses lasers. The fires they start can be, and often are, directed into areas that the attacker's forces cannot observe directly. These are disproportionately likely to contain civilians, and (being incendiary) the weapons often start fires very quickly, which then spread rapidly out of control. Laser and plasma/ion weapons can certainly start fires, but because they are direct fire weapons, they will tend to be starting fires along the front edge of the battle area (for laser/plasma/particle), or around a point target we've already decided to obliterate anyway (ion cannons from orbit). This is why I think inferno gel raises problems in practice given how incendiary weapons are used in real life.

2) A big part of my own opposition to inferno gel is basically "because Initiative First wants it and I see what they're doing here." I've already discussed this in recent posts, so I'm going to try not to repeat myself and waste everyone's time.

HousePet said:
LOL. Those military techs when we don't have the dice or STUs to deploy them.

Some people have stated their reasoning as "we need to develop these techs so we know roughly how bad our STU situation is gonna be in the near future and how hard we have to focus on making it better."

bigking321 said:
I just want to research the tech to see what it unlocks.

If all it unlocks is super napalm then great we know how to make super napalm now.

Given how the Bureau of Munitions works, I'm pretty sure we can't develop this tech and then not have it get deployed onto the battlefield anymore. The decision of whether to deploy a new type of munitions, once it's just a matter of "now that we have blueprints for a new kind of bomb, do we manufacture this kind of bomb, y/n" is largely out of our hands. Munitions takes it over, and I'm pretty sure they default to "yes."

Vilegrave · Jul 10, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
The problem is that liquid tiberium is so incredibly volatile (as I recall, amounts you could fit in a case of soda cans will explode with nuclear-equivalent yield) that I'm pretty sure nobody in their right mind would convert solid tiberium into liquid tiberium in the field if they could avoid it. Not without a way to prevent it from going 'boom' at all.

Thats why i said it was the first step, just being able to process the stuff at all means there will be an impetus to start developing a system that will let us gather liquid-T deposits from underground so we can defuse that time bomb which we can then develop further over time.

Eventually we could end up with a MARV equivalent that melts, stores and processes Tib on the go. Or a Drone unit that can suck up the Liquid T (Like a reverse Scrin Corruptor maybe) and remove the need to risk our people.

bigking321 · Jul 10, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
Given how the Bureau of Munitions works, I'm pretty sure we can't develop this tech and then not have it get deployed onto the battlefield anymore. The decision of whether to deploy a new type of munitions, once it's just a matter of "now that we have blueprints for a new kind of bomb, do we manufacture this kind of bomb, y/n" is largely out of our hands. Munitions takes it over, and I'm pretty sure they default to "yes."

That's fine. Then they have a new weapon they can use when appropriate.

If that means we can better combat whatever then great. I can think of plenty of situations that being able to drop fire on something could be useful.

I'm also sure we won't be using it indiscriminately and burning down civilian camps or anything.

If there was no time limit I would care less but now we will lose the tech we got from a 38 nod breakthrough soon. I don't want to lose that tech. I really want to see where it leads and if we get anything interesting from it like T-glass.

And we JUST had broad support to do it during the wait for the turn start. We were finally going to do it after irl years. And now people want to drop it entirely because the IF suddenly wants it as well after how many years and that triggers some people.

And that is intensely frustrating.

Simon_Jester · Jul 10, 2023

Vilegrave said:
Eventually we could end up with a MARV equivalent that melts, stores and processes Tib on the go. Or a Drone unit that can suck up the Liquid T (Like a reverse Scrin Corruptor maybe) and remove the need to risk our people.

The former sounds like a giant rolling bomb, since it would need to contain sizeable amounts of liquid tiberium at any time. Better to just try and find a more compact way to refine solid tiberium; "ability to store the tiberium" is not the bottleneck here, and we already have Visitortech harvester tendrils which have some of the advantages you seem to attribute to liquefaction.

The latter sounds like a great idea, but something very close to what we already have- again, the problem is that the mining process itself can set off liquid tiberium deposits inside other tiberium, so that by the time we even know it's there, it's already gone off like a kiloton bomb.

bigking321 said:
That's fine. Then they have a new weapon they can use when appropriate.

Well, the chief point of objection here is that it's very likely to be put to uses that a reasonable person might consider lamentable, just by the nature of what it is and how it's deployed. You don't have to be using it as a cackling massacre of refugee camps for it to lead to problems.

Personally, I feel that we have so many interesting techs that Nod #38 is... something I'm willing to just let go, for the sake of not leaning into and enabling some of the worst-impulse aspects of GDI, which have lined up in favor of the development project.

And we JUST had broad support to do it during the wait for the turn start. We were finally going to do it after irl years. And now people want to drop it entirely because the IF suddenly wants it as well after how many years and that triggers some people.

Honestly, the fact that this became a topic of an entirely different political controversy right after the election is, to me, a potential valid reason not to build and develop a weapon.

BoSPaladin · Jul 10, 2023

Hows this for an idea. We dev tanks and whatever now. Start building them while also researching upgrades.

And we might just produce a limited run of tanks. Simple. At first a solid upgrade. But as time goes by and those even newer models come out with fancy new tech. The tanks we make now get moved into rearline and backup duties.

bigking321 · Jul 10, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
Personally, I feel that we have so many interesting techs that Nod #38 is... something I'm willing to just let go, for the sake of not leaning into and enabling some of the worst-impulse aspects of GDI, which have lined up in favor of the development project.

But SADN and Biowarfare Countermeasures that IF wants is/were fine? Not that I disagree with that. I want those as well.

I just find the logic of not doing something I want to do specifically to spite/punish/not enable other people that I don't like that also happen to want it... utterly stupid. If they want something we also want let's just take the win and move on.

I've been in favor of researching inferno gel for ages now. IF suddenly wanting it as well changes nothing about why I want to do it. I refuse to let what they want affect me in that way.

I wouldn't stop caring about space if they suddenly really supported it or some other hyperbolic example.

Oregano · Jul 10, 2023

[X] Plan Chippin' In

Oledoms · Jul 10, 2023

Does Advances Armor Alloy also work on Zone Suits? Or is it limited only to tanks?

MSH · Jul 10, 2023

bigking321 said:
But SADN and Biowarfare Countermeasures that IF wants is/were fine? Not that I disagree with that. I want those as well.

I just find the logic of not doing something I want to do specifically to spite/punish/not enable other people that I don't like that also happen to want it... utterly stupid. If they want something we also want let's just take the win and move on.

I've been in favor of researching inferno gel for ages now. IF suddenly wanting it as well changes nothing about why I want to do it. I refuse to let what they want affect me in that way.

I wouldn't stop caring about space if they suddenly really supported it or some other hyperbolic example.

Inferno Gel has limited practicality and questionable ethics, but the main reason I'm opposed to doing it is that this already weak position as a tech is now exacerbated by the specific implications of IF lobbying for it.

IF lobbied for SADN because they expect Nod to initiate a general nuclear exchange any day now, and they're lobbying for biowarfare countermeasures for similar reasons. These are products of the fear wing of IF - in both cases and especially the biowarfare countermeasures, it seems unlikely that Nod will actually engage in either, but it also isn't wholly spurious and it does little damage to people's mindsets to create these defenses.

The desire for inferno gel is definitely a product of the hate wing, and them specifically I want to be made pariahs. I think that is more useful to us than actually having inferno gel munitions. To tacitly or explicitly give them what they want is harmful to our overall political culture, which isn't mature enough to be without risk.

If the tech were very useful, or if it hadn't become the basis of the most toxic kind of political meme, I would have a different opinion. If it were just Open Hand asking for it to be banned, that probably wouldn't sway me. But specifically this behavior from the worst of IF, and the shift of the general political cost from doing inferno gel to not doing inferno gel in one turn, just because of Open Hand's very existence? That's worrisome. The QM has said that the information we are given contains subtle warnings and implied storytelling, and I think this is one such instance.

Most of all, this is a good opportunity to fuck with IF's internal stability, by banning inferno gel for Open Hand while also doing countermeasures for the fear wing of IF. The convenient thing about the kind of people who would be IF party staff and partisans is that they'll turn on each other if given a reason to do so, and I think this just might do the trick. Separated, the fear and hate wings of IF would be a vastly diminished problem.

Dmol8 · Jul 10, 2023

BoSPaladin said:
Hows this for an idea. We dev tanks and whatever now. Start building them while also researching upgrades.

And we might just produce a limited run of tanks. Simple. At first a solid upgrade. But as time goes by and those even newer models come out with fancy new tech. The tanks we make now get moved into rearline and backup duties.

That is not how military procurement works. There are limited runs of weapons only while they are experimental and logistics trumps weapon quality every time. See here:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gPTpLIUMN0

That gun was better than the alternatives at the time, but because they couldn't keep it supplied it was downgraded. It's a similar issue with these new vehicles: If we do them before we understand the better tech we will have to upgrade them soon after the better tech is researched which will mean more Dice spent for almost the same result. Not worth it.

Hunter531 · Jul 10, 2023

Um, I might be crazy, and tell me if I am, but we might be able to take our foot off the Fusion Plants accelerator surprisingly soon. Allow me to explain. I was looking at the schedule of fusion plant decommissionings and I decided to add in the sub-department quarterly power gains to the equation, in order to see how close we are to getting the situation handled. The results surprised me.

For context the Energy losses from now until Phase 9 goes out of service in Q4 2068 sum up to -152 Energy, a frankly terrifying number compared to our surplus of +48. However, when you include the +5 Energy per turn in the equation, our peak net loss drops down to -52*. So once we complete the current phase of Second Gen Fusion, we'll be in the positives on this.

Of course, this doesn't factor in the other Energy using projects we'll undertake during this period. Nuuk and the remaining Zone Armor factories we promised are huge Energy sinks. As are the Isolinear Fabricator if we go for all phases, the final phase of North Boston, and Repulsorplate Factories, albeit to lesser degrees. We're probably going to need at least two more phases of Fusion Plants after this one, likely more. It's not all doom and gloom though. Bergen should help our Energy woes, and the High Energy Capacitors look promising as well.

*This becomes -62 if we do @Simon_Jester's proposed early decommissioning. As such, unless the Energy Reserve benefits are massive, I'm not a huge fan.

Simon_Jester · Jul 10, 2023

BoSPaladin said:
Hows this for an idea. We dev tanks and whatever now. Start building them while also researching upgrades.

And we might just produce a limited run of tanks. Simple. At first a solid upgrade. But as time goes by and those even newer models come out with fancy new tech. The tanks we make now get moved into rearline and backup duties.

This sounds great as long as you don't worry about the details.

GDI's military-industrial complex doesn't want to be rebuilding the entire tank design every three to five years, and we don't want to have to go back and rebuild the entire tank factory network every three to five years. All the discussion in the text surrounding this tank design is that whatever it is, it needs to last us for the next 15-20 years.

There are major key technologies sitting right there waiting for us to develop them. We've been told they can't be integrated into the design as small modifications of the existing design. We need to put those technologies into the tank now, or we're going to be stuck without them for a long time. We can't just say "well, we'll deploy a new version in four years that has those things" because we'd be rebuilding all our tank factories every plan cycle and that's unsustainable.

bigking321 said:
But SADN and Biowarfare Countermeasures that IF wants is/were fine? Not that I disagree with that. I want those as well.

See, I'd normally say yes, but I'm trying to read between the lines of the broader political situation. It's not just "because Initiative First wants it, I don't want it." It's "this has become a fight between a small and unpopular political faction arguing on something like humanitarian grounds, and a medium-sized political faction arguing on "fuck 'em, they don't deserve humanitarian crap" grounds.

The medium-sized faction appears to be winning, judging by the -5 PS cost disappearing from the action.

If Initiative First wanted inferno gel because it had a clear and apparent major role in making GDI's population safer, I wouldn't mind doing something they wanted done. But here, reading between the lines, it looks as though basically they want it as a way of scoring points at Open Hand's expense. And that is something I object to, given that inferno gel isn't... actually some kind of major priority or need for us.

Hunter531 said:
Um, I might be crazy, and tell me if I am, but we might be able to take our foot off the Fusion Plants accelerator surprisingly soon. Allow me to explain. I was looking at the schedule of fusion plant decommissionings and I decided to add in the sub-department quarterly power gains to the equation, in order to see how close we are to getting the situation handled. The results surprised me.

For context the Energy losses from now until Phase 9 goes out of service in Q4 2068 sum up to -152 Energy, a frankly terrifying number compared to our surplus of +48. However, when you include the +5 Energy per turn in the equation, our peak net loss drops down to -52*. So once we complete the current phase of Second Gen Fusion, we'll be in the positives on this.

Of course, this doesn't factor in the other Energy using projects we'll undertake during this period. Nuuk and the remaining Zone Armor factories we promised are huge Energy sinks. As are the Isolinear Fabricator if we go for all phases, the final phase of North Boston, and Repulsorplate Factories, albeit to lesser degrees. We're probably going to need at least two more phases of Fusion Plants after this one, likely more. It's not all doom and gloom though. Bergen should help our Energy woes, and the High Energy Capacitors look promising as well.

*This becomes -62 if we do @Simon_Jester's proposed early decommissioning. As such, unless the Energy Reserve benefits are massive, I'm not a huge fan.

We're probably in a position where we can at least slow down to one die per turn or two dice every other turn and still keep up a comfortable Energy surplus.

The real issue is that we need to keep the Energy reserve thick enough that we don't have to struggle to "keep ahead" of the power plant decommissioning curve during 2066-67. As long as we're at +40 Energy or so and stay there instead of letting our surplus gradually dwindle back to +20 or less, that's not a problem; we'll always be comfortably able to finish a new phase of second generation plants to replace a phase of first generation plants.

The idea is to avoid having to reprise the same mad-bastard scramble to rush build power plants we suffered through during the Regency War when we were crash-completing multiple major war factories (at -5 or -6 Energy each) and needing a new phase of fusion plants practically every turn. The thick surplus we've built up is a part of that.

bigking321 · Jul 10, 2023

MSH said:
If the tech were very useful

But that's the entire point. We don't know how useful it is. We can make logical guesses but we don't know for sure until we research it what we get from it. Again, T-glass.

MSH said:
Most of all, this is a good opportunity to fuck with IF's internal stability, by banning inferno gel for Open Hand while also doing countermeasures for the fear wing of IF.

First off I have always been against deliberately antagonizing the citizens we are supposed so be serving and protecting just because we disagree with them on various issues. I'm not saying do any promises with them at all but I find the active spite against them a bit much.

And secondly I am super against siding with the nod reformists against them. I'm fine agreeing with Open Hand on a lot of things but directly taking the side of former nod against life long GDI people? Especially against something I want to do? No thank you.

Simon_Jester said:
given that inferno gel isn't... actually some kind of major priority or need for us.

It is for some of us.

Simon_Jester · Jul 10, 2023

bigking321 said:
First off I have always been against deliberately antagonizing the citizens we are supposed so be serving and protecting just because we disagree with them on various issues. I'm not saying do any promises with them at all but I find the active spite against them a bit much.

As I see it, the problem is that any democratic society will tend to include ideological movements whose values are a threat to the system's ability continue to tolerate other groups. Giving these movements a victory is a bad idea as a matter of public policy, because it sets the precedent of them having influence over public policy. Right now, there is no way for us to roll out super-incendiary bombs without effectively sending a political message.

I don't want to send certain messages.

And secondly I am super against siding with the nod reformists against them. I'm fine agreeing with Open Hand on a lot of things but directly taking the side of former nod against life long GDI people?

Well, that's kind of the core of Initiative First's platform, isn't it? That if you've lived all your life in a Blue Zone, you inherently have a greater claim on GDI's protection and support of your values than someone who didn't always live in a Blue Zone, someone who's joined the Initiative because they believe in it or because they want to be a part of its project or because Nod conquered the area they lived in as a child?

That "life long GDI people" have more right to consideration?

It is for some of us.

Arguments of the form "I am extremely attached to the idea of incendiary weapons" are something I can only shrug and say 'not my thing' to.

mmgaballah · Jul 10, 2023

MSH said:
by banning inferno gel

we can't and don't have the authority to ban anything that is up to parliament , this is Open Hand asking the treasury department not to develop and deploy inferno gel , that just means the military will just outsource it the private business via contracting and then get their inferno gel anyway , the GM mentioned that stuff that gets removed as an option isn't being cancelled or given up on but rather contracted out , and recent updates mention that the growing private sector is starting to see consolidation and mergers take place letting large corporations that can take on major government contracts (like inferno gel) begin to emerge

bigking321 · Jul 10, 2023

mmgaballah said:
the GM mentioned that stuff that gets removed as an option isn't being cancelled or given up on but rather contracted out , and recent updates mention that the growing private sector is starting to see consolidation and mergers take place letting large corporations that can take on major government contracts (like inferno gel) begin to emerge

Oh thank heavens. That is much more palatable than just losing the tech forever. That takes care of most of my concerns.

Thanks very much for letting us know.

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