Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

mmgaballah · Jul 10, 2023

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

no , but as a larger political party who legitimately represent a greater number of the GDI's people than Open Hand does they are entitled to be given greater consideration and have more of a say than the out right insignificant and minuscule Open Hand party , cause democratic representation is a thing that exists

MSH · Jul 10, 2023

bigking321 said:
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.

The way we got T-Glass was an anomaly from messing around with xenotech. Literal alien goo.

This is a Nod tech for omega-napalm. It's not that mysterious.

mmgaballah said:
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

I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that the private sector will ever get off the ground. Earth is at early 1800s population levels, and GDI is about half of that. The impetus and viability of a true private sector is very questionable, for all that many people desire it for political reasons.

But inferno gel definitely will be introduced if the treasury does it. Whether it actually gets done otherwise isn't something we have direct control over, but that's why I want to intentionally stir up a political shitstorm over IF about it.

ninjakirito6 · Jul 10, 2023

Hunter531 said:
I wouldn't lump Inferno Gel in with the laser and ion weapons just because both burn.the latter kill quickly, or at least as quickly as more conventional equivalents. Inferno Gel, however, is another matter. Imagine you're a Nod soldier trapped in a vehicle hit by Inferno Gel. All of a sudden your vehicle is dead, and the cabin is filling up with smoke. If you're lucky, you can't escape and slowly suffocate. If you aren't, you escape and are burned alive. That's a far more horrific fate than the other weapons you mentioned, thus the added controversy.

And getting your insides burnt out and slowly dying as your body goes into shock and your brain shuts down is any better? Its not, they are just as horrific a way for the person getting killed as Inferno Gel.

Simon_Jester said:
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.

I can agree with and understand your position on the second point, but all the first one does is explain why Incendiary weapons are banned IRL, but the Ion Cannons and Lasers we use in quest are also banned IRL. So saying Inferno Gel is problematic is a non-answer to my question because so are the Ion Cannons and Laser Weapons GDI uses. Like, I don't deny that getting killed by Inferno Gel is a terrible way to go but decrying Inferno Gel for it while ignoring all the other ways we horribly kill people in quest is just strange.

It's just, near every time Inferno Gel comes up there is someone who says it's bad and we shouldn't use because of X, and I'm like "Y and Z are just as bad and their fine with them, so why single out Inferno Gel?"

Lightwhispers · Jul 10, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
I dunno. It's about a 1600-point-ish project at this point, which means about twenty dice. I doubt it needs more than an eight-die investment (potentially split across Tiberium and Infrastructure). And since deliberately super-rushing projects is not necessarily a good idea, I'd say that something like investing 7-7-7-2 (a worst plausible case of cursed rolls) from 2064Q4 to 2065Q3 would be better than investing, say, 11-11.

Unless things have changed, there's no real point in trying to complete more than Phases 1-3 of Karachi in the first turn we work on it, because there's only so much we can actually build in 3 months. So, 2 Tib dice and 5 Infra dice for Q4 will almost guarantee completion of Phases 1-3, the same Q1 should complete Phase 4 with a comfortable amount of overflow, and unless dice were very cursed, we shouldn't need to put that many dice in Q2 to complete Phase 5.

Simon_Jester said:
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.

I'm pretty sure that on a strategic level, al-Isfahani is a nuclear power the same way France IRL is a nuclear power. (Tactically/operationally, he will likely be firing off nukes as much as he can, but that's business as usual for this quest.) He has some strategic nukes, he has second-strike capability, but he's still at most a second-tier warlord.

Derpmind said:
@Lightwhispers I've also found a few errors in this turn's Array. This should be at 2/200.
This should be at 0/185.
This has been split into three phases at 0/185 each.
This should be at 16/285.

Fixed, thanks!

bigking321 said:
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.

I'm not sure support for Inferno Gel has changed. I don't like it because I don't think it will be particularly useful, similar to how I am quite irritated by having to put dice on completing the Islands in order to not mess up relations with the Navy. And I suspect a lot of other people feel the same about IG.
That IF wants to do it is a very minor addition to the calculations.

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

We don't know, that's probably something that will be discovered by doing the development project

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.

If we continue to put 1-2 dice into Fusion Plants per turn, we should be good for the foreseeable future. We're trying to build up a larger surplus so that when the original plants come offline, it causes minimal disruption, since once we hit 2065, we'll be losing 32 or more Energy per year.

mmgaballah said:
no , but as a larger political party who legitimately represent a greater number of the GDI's people than Open Hand does they are entitled to be given greater consideration and have more of a say than the out right insignificant and minuscule Open Hand party , cause democratic representation is a thing that exists

Oh, taking the Open Hand promise is very much a political signalling action - it is partially continuing to snub what, from what we can tell, is the "bigotry" wing of Initiative First, and partially showing that the Treasury intends to continue and advance the integrationist agenda of the past.

mmgaballah · Jul 10, 2023

MSH said:
I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that the private sector will ever get off the ground. Earth is at early 1800s population levels, and GDI is about half of that. The impetus and viability of a true private sector is very questionable, for all that many people desire it for political reasons.

But inferno gel definitely will be introduced if the treasury does it. Whether it actually gets done otherwise isn't something we have direct control over, but that's why I want to intentionally stir up a political shitstorm over IF about it.

this is word of god , the GM straight up mentioned on discord that the military is intend to contract inferno gel to the private sector if we don't do it

Derpmind · Jul 10, 2023

I want to research Inferno Gel because weapon technology unlocks often have non-weapon uses. The Inferno Gel could easily unlock something we won't expect until we do it. That might not happen if the technology gets contracted out though.

Manowl · Jul 10, 2023

mmgaballah said:
this is word of god , the GM straight up mentioned on discord that the military is intend to contract inferno gel to the private sector if we don't do it

Who would ever think that a military doesn't like to just abandon stuff that could help kill enemies of the state, also thinking on it the company that's going to get it is not going to stop at just this inferno gel, they are going like all companies want to expand and expand so we might be making competition that will just take technology research because they want money and the military thanks the treasury doesn't just want to build stuff like that?

Khop · Jul 10, 2023

MSH said:
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

We passed a 1/3 chance to not have a nuclear exchange by pushing YZ offensives not that long ago. It is in fact a very real risk and one we avoided quite narrowly.

Hunter531 · Jul 10, 2023

Lightwhispers said:
If we continue to put 1-2 dice into Fusion Plants per turn, we should be good for the foreseeable future. We're trying to build up a larger surplus so that when the original plants come offline, it causes minimal disruption, since once we hit 2065, we'll be losing 32 or more Energy per year.

Actually, when you factor in our standard energy gains per turn, we never lose as much as 32 Energy per year. 2065 we lose 12, which works out pretty nicely since that's how much we gain net in 2064, so the years cancel out. We lose 12 Energy in 2066 and 2068 as well. 2067 is our worst year, and even then we only lose 28 Energy, which admittedly is still pretty sizable.

Simon_Jester · Jul 10, 2023

Lightwhispers said:
Unless things have changed, there's no real point in trying to complete more than Phases 1-3 of Karachi in the first turn we work on it, because there's only so much we can actually build in 3 months. So, 2 Tib dice and 5 Infra dice for Q4 will almost guarantee completion of Phases 1-3, the same Q1 should complete Phase 4 with a comfortable amount of overflow, and unless dice were very cursed, we shouldn't need to put that many dice in Q2 to complete Phase 5.

That is loosely what I had in mind, I was just being deliberately conservative with how many dice we might need to get the job done, perhaps extremely so. Point being, this won't necessarily lock down all of Infrastructure plus all of Tiberium the way we'd feared.

I'm pretty sure that on a strategic level, al-Isfahani is a nuclear power the same way France IRL is a nuclear power. (Tactically/operationally, he will likely be firing off nukes as much as he can, but that's business as usual for this quest.) He has some strategic nukes, he has second-strike capability, but he's still at most a second-tier warlord.

France's Cold War nuclear doctrine was, to paraphrase, "Russia will not lightly start a war with a nation that has the capacity to kill eighty million Russians at the push of a button. Not even if the Russians can also push their button and kill eight hundred million Frenchmen, that is, if there were eight hundred million Frenchmen to kill."

I fully expect al-Isfahani to not get off many nuclear shots that penetrate our defenses and hit rear area targets. Maybe things will go great, and he won't get through with any! But I want to be prepared for the possibility of mass-casualty attacks and of possible need to evacuate large areas due to damage to infrastructure (e.g. "the water purification plant that serves half a million people just went boom").

It seems a relatively easy and harmless thing to prepare for, and there's lots of overlap between this and other things that are clearly a good idea.

If we continue to put 1-2 dice into Fusion Plants per turn, we should be good for the foreseeable future. We're trying to build up a larger surplus so that when the original plants come offline, it causes minimal disruption, since once we hit 2065, we'll be losing 32 or more Energy per year.

I think one die per turn should be enough for a while, though if it looks like our surplus is starting to slip down past, say, +40 or so, then we would need to go back to two.

mmgaballah said:
no , but as a larger political party who legitimately represent a greater number of the GDI's people than Open Hand does they are entitled to be given greater consideration and have more of a say than the out right insignificant and minuscule Open Hand party , cause democratic representation is a thing that exists

Both Open Hand and Initiative First are, in the terminology of a parliamentary democracy, "opposition governments." Neither is part of the broad coalition of groups that collectively hold the majority in GDI's legislature. As such we are under no obligation to give either group a say, or to choose one over the other. If 10% of GDI's populace inexplicably joins the "Let's All Gargle Liquid Tiberium Party," we are under no obligation to grant them concessions just because there are more of them than of the 1%-arian "Let's Not Party" while the other 89% of the legislature forms a broad "Let's Wait And Do More Studies" coalition.

Parliamentary democracies (and democracies in general) are perfectly capable of generating political parties that should not be heeded. One key sign of this is when you get a party that regularly demands that other people's rights be abridged. Because once they start scoring power and wins that way, and gaining prestige through successes, they can leverage that into a self-amplifying trend. They put more restrictions on people's rights, make it harder for them to use their own political voices to restrain the trend, and keep going until they've created a very unpleasant state of things.

Initiative First is one such party and it presents us with serious problems in dealing with their preferences.

MSH said:
I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that the private sector will ever get off the ground. Earth is at early 1800s population levels, and GDI is about half of that.

I mean, Europe had much less than half of early 1800s Earth's population, but had a vigorous private sector.

Plenty of nations have populations far lower than 600 million and have private sectors. What is it that you think the problem is here?

ninjakirito6 said:
I can agree with and understand your position on the second point, but all the first one does is explain why Incendiary weapons are banned IRL, but the Ion Cannons and Lasers we use in quest are also banned IRL.

No, it explains why there is a difference that is relevant in-quest.

IRL, directed energy weapons are subjected to bans no one bothers to contest because nobody's ready to deploy them anyway. It's like banning the use of unicorn cavalry in warfare; nobody cares enough to push back against it.

In quest, things are more complex. So the question becomes "okay, laser/ion/plasma/particle weapons have the potential to start fires, so why wouldn't they be just as banned/acceptable as inferno gel or other lesser incendiaries, no more and no less?"

And my response to that question was:

"Because there's a difference in how a chemical incendiary you load in a bomb or missile is used, and how a laser cannon is used. The laser is used in direct fire against targets that are, necessarily, in line of sight. As such, it is generally possible for a laser to be used discriminately against active enemy forces, taking various precautions to avoid harming civilians. It is much harder to do this with an incendiary bomb or warhead, which is often going to be thrown at targets well behind the lines or not in direct observation. This distinction may not seem relevant in IRL international law, but there is in practice a difference here."

mmgaballah said:
this is word of god , the GM straight up mentioned on discord that the military is intend to contract inferno gel to the private sector if we don't do it

Would you mind actually quoting this and getting the QM to confirm it? Because sometimes the QM says stuff on Discord that he doesn't want us casually throwing around to win arguments in the thread, because he may or may not have made up his own mind on the subject, or may want to rethink it.

Hunter531 said:
Actually, when you factor in our standard energy gains per turn, we never lose as much as 32 Energy per year. 2065 we lose 12, which works out pretty nicely since that's how much we gain net in 2064, so the years cancel out. We lose 12 Energy in 2066 and 2068 as well. 2067 is our worst year, and even then we only lose 28 Energy, which admittedly is still pretty sizable.

The problem with this kind of analysis is that we have a constant "background" Energy consumption going on every single turn. This is a huge factor in our calculations; in most turns we use considerably more Energy than the DAE provides us. And it isn't feasible for us to decide not to use Energy because so many projects require it.

So saying "we only lose 28 Energy in 2067" is more accurately represented as "we only lose 28 Energy plus the Energy costs of every single project we do that year." Which, if we have a fairly 'average' year in 2067, could easily mean that the total goes from "only 28" to fifty, sixty, or even more.

MSH · Jul 10, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
I mean, Europe had much less than half of early 1800s Earth's population, but had a vigorous private sector.

Plenty of nations have populations far lower than 600 million and have private sectors. What is it that you think the problem is here?

The private sector in its recognizable form then was centered largely around industrial centralization and colonial extraction. I suppose you can theoretically replace the extraction with tiberium in many sectors, but we have an overwhelming dominance of central industry and we certainly aren't going to let private tiberium refinement happen.

I don't think it's impossible, but it's damned awkward. Then there's the lack of free labor, and the need to automate - again, heavily centralized on us. The "private" market is joined to the treasury's whims in a way it can't really do anything about directly.

It's probably good we insisted on a cooperative policy for the market. I think it would be entirely nonfunctional or an actual enemy if it were trying to wring resources out of the treasury in the 20th century fashion.

Ithillid · Jul 10, 2023

mmgaballah said:
this is word of god , the GM straight up mentioned on discord that the military is intend to contract inferno gel to the private sector if we don't do it

No, I said they would be passing off tarberries and spider cotton, not inferno gel.

Manowl · Jul 10, 2023

Good to know, still can't imagine that the military is just going to let inferno gel not be developed somehow since it's there job to get that sort of stuff.

Rakuhn · Jul 10, 2023

I didn't plan on doing this until after the vote ended, but given the discussion on energy, I thought it might be helpful:

Updated Energy analysis:
We owe 152 energy.
We have 48 energy.
We want to maintain a floor of 19 energy.
152-(48-19) = 123 energy.
-------------
DAE +5 energy /turn.
From Fusion, (84 progress / die, 19 energy/270 progress) +5.91 energy/die.
The final phase of fusion would be 'due' in 2068 Q4, or 20 turns from now.
For a heavily simplified (123/20) -6.15 energy/turn.
2 Dice Fusion + DAE - Debt = Net

11.82 + 5 - 6.15 = +10.67 net energy/turn
--------------------------------------------
Net energy to be spent on Plan Goals:
-8 North Boston, -8 Processing Plants?, -1 Hospitals, -3 Orcas, -16 GFZA, -2 Gov A, +8 Bergen 4, +4 Deep Glaciers, +3 RZ Containment Lines, +1 RZ MARVS = -22 energy

Very likely energy spending:
Second Gen Repulsorplate Factories -6, Aberdeen Phase 2 -2, Autodocs -3, Stealth Disruptors -2, Railgun Munitions -1 (will autocomplete), Ultralight Munitions -2 (will autocomplete), MRAP -2 = -18 energy

-40 energy/8 turns remaining in the plan= -5 energy/turn
10.67-5 = +5.67 energy/turn

Changes(Governor A revealed: +4 energy, added Aberdeen Phase 2: -2 Energy.) Net per turn: +5.42->+5.67

Now that the Governor A's energy cost has been revealed, the numbers are looking better. Given the labor crisis that's starting, I'm betting that Aberdeen Phase 2 will be a priority this plan. The big ??? is how much energy the xeno refining costs.

Hunter531 · Jul 10, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
The problem with this kind of analysis is that we have a constant "background" Energy consumption going on every single turn. This is a huge factor in our calculations; in most turns we use considerably more Energy than the DAE provides us. And it isn't feasible for us to decide not to use Energy because so many projects require it.

I never said it was a perfect analysis, but it doesn't have to be. Figuring out how many Fusion phases we need to deal with the decommissioning means that we know how many we'll need to do before we are actually adding Energy that can be used for the background stuff. That's fairly useful in deciding what Energy sink-type projects we want to embark on.

bigking321 · Jul 10, 2023

Dammit...

Now I have to try and get inferno gel researched again...

Sigh...

Lightwhispers · Jul 10, 2023

Hunter531 said:
Actually, when you factor in our standard energy gains per turn, we never lose as much as 32 Energy per year. 2065 we lose 12, which works out pretty nicely since that's how much we gain net in 2064, so the years cancel out. We lose 12 Energy in 2066 and 2068 as well. 2067 is our worst year, and even then we only lose 28 Energy, which admittedly is still pretty sizable.

True, but I'm expecting Energy expenses to go up as we have to push harder on automation. But we can probably ease off a bit, assuming new projects allow.

Manowl said:
Good to know, still can't imagine that the military is just going to let inferno gel not be developed somehow since it's there job to get that sort of stuff.

The military's job is to win wars. They have not put a priority on Inferno Gel, thus it's a reasonable assumption that they do not consider it a vital tool. Now, I will grant that they have not put any development as a Priority issue, but I have yet to find anyone who will say it is a controversial statement that Inferno Gel is less useful* a development than things like Particle Shields, Advanced Armor, or Particle Beams.

*I am specifically saying less useful, not urgent. Arguments which incorporate "we need to do it or lose it" will be ignored for irrelevance. (And because if by some miracle we manage to clear out the decade's-worth of Military projects we have on-hand, I am certain that it would come back as a possibility for research.)

MSH said:
The private sector in its recognizable form then was centered largely around industrial centralization and colonial extraction. I suppose you can theoretically replace the extraction with tiberium in many sectors, but we have an overwhelming dominance of central industry and we certainly aren't going to let private tiberium refinement happen.

I don't think it's impossible, but it's damned awkward. Then there's the lack of free labor, and the need to automate - again, heavily centralized on us. The "private" market is joined to the treasury's whims in a way it can't really do anything about directly.

It's probably good we insisted on a cooperative policy for the market. I think it would be entirely nonfunctional or an actual enemy if it were trying to wring resources out of the treasury in the 20th century fashion.

The private sector is currently in good enough shape to provide contacts for Capital Goods and transportation (Logistics) to the government, and is increasing in size sufficient to increase our tax income by 20 RpT per Turn. It's hitting diminishing returns now, but it's in pretty good shape.

v1adimir · Jul 10, 2023

[X] Plan Give Me Science!

Hunter531 · Jul 10, 2023

Manowl said:
Good to know, still can't imagine that the military is just going to let inferno gel not be developed somehow since it's there job to get that sort of stuff.

I wouldn't bet on the private sector delivering us Inferno Gel, courtesy of Initiative First. They've linked the project to the most hateful parts of their ideology. As such, any company taking the contract will be, in essence, endorsing said beliefs.

Corporations, by and large, tend to avoid such ethically and politically controversial positions (it's just the ones who do get the most attention). It's made worse in this case, since ex-Nod make up a sizable percentage of the private sector. With how competitive the labor market is right now, angering a sizable percentage of your potential employee base is not a smart business decision.

I'm not saying it's impossible for the private sector to work on this. People make bad business decisions all the time. It's just that the odds of a company willing and able to complete the project despite the negative publicity showing up isn't all that good. It's made worse by the fact that I can't imagine the military will be willing to pay the kind of premium that would compensate for the hassle.

Heck, given how the project is timing out, I'm not sure they'd be willing to pay for it, period. In all the discussions on Inferno Gel I haven't seen any role such weapons can fulfill that more conventional arms can't. It may be able to do some stuff better than conventional weapons at a sizable moral cost (can't know for sure unless we actually research it), but there's no Inferno Gel-shaped hole in GDI's doctrine. Plus, paying for research projects really isn't the military's job so much as it is ours.

Rakuhn · Jul 10, 2023

[X] Plan Bracing for Impact 1.3:
Gib inhibitors

KnightDisciple · Jul 10, 2023

[X] Plan The Fire Shall Not Touch Them
-[X] Infrastructure 5 dice +27 85R
--[X] Yellow Zone Fortress Towns (Phase 7) 93/250 2 dice 40R 63%
--[X] Rail Network Construction Campaigns (Phase 6) 108/245 2 dice 30R 78%
--[X] Advanced Tunnel Borer Development (New) 0/80 1 die 15R 68%
-[X] Heavy Industry 5 +6 free dice +34 195R
--[X] Second Generation Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants (Phase 4) 117/270 2 dice 40R 77%
--[X] North Boston Chip Fabricator (Phase 5) 406/1805 7 dice 105R
--[X] Second Generation Repulsorplate Factories 365/525 2 dice 50R 72%
-[X] Light and Chemical Industry 4 dice +29 110R
--[X] Bergen Superconductor Foundry (Phase 4) 523/610 3 dice 90R 100%
--[X] High Energy Capacitors Development (Tech) (New) 0/60 1 die 20R 90%
-[X] Agriculture 6 dice +29 70R
--[X] Reforestation Campaign Preparations (Phase 1) 737/805 2 dice 10R 100%
--[X] Spider Cotton Plantations (Phase 2) 60/160 1 die 20R 50%
--[X] Laboratory Meat Deployment (Phase 1) 0/170 2 dice 30R 54%
--[X] Organ Farming Programs (Tech) (New) (MS) 0/120 1 die 10R 30%
-[X] Tiberium 7 dice +39 185R
--[X] Deep Red Zone Tiberium Glacier Mining (Stage 4) 0/190 1 die 30R
--[X] Enhanced Harvest Tiberium Spikes 145/180 1 die 20R 100%
--[X] Coordinated Abatement Programs (Phase 3) 93/175 1 die 25R 73%
--[X] Xenotech Tiberium Refinery Development (Tech) (New) 0/180 2 dice 70R 72%
--[X] Liquid Tiberium Refining Development (Tech) (New) 0/180 2 dice 40R 72%
-[X] Orbital 7 dice + Erewhon +34 160R
--[X] Spaceport Bay 0/295 3 dice 60R 42%
--[X] GDSS Shala (Phase 5) 868/975 1 die + Erewhon 40R 86.74%
--[X] Species Restoration Bay (Stage 1) 0/255 3 dice 60R 71%
-[X] Services 4 dice +35 80R
--[X] Cosmetic Biosculpting (Tech) 194/345 1 die 30R 5%
--[X] Civil Sensory Augmentics Development (Tech) (New) 0/120 1 die 20R 36%
--[X] Phage Engineering Development (Tech) (New) 0/40 1 die 15R 100%
--[X] Biowarfare Countermeasures Development (Tech) (New) 1 die 15R 100%
-[X] Military 7 + 1 AA dice +31 150R
--[X] Department of Refits -1 Mil die -30 RpT auto
--[X] Tib Core Missile Seeker Analysis (Tech) (New) 0/60 1 die 5R 92%
--[X] Advanced Armor Composites (Tech) (New) 0/80 2 die 30R 100%
--[X] Orca Wingmen Drone Deployment (Phase 2) 196/215 1 AA die 20R 97%
--[X] Thunderbolt II Missile Development (Platform) (New) 0/60 1 die 15R 92%
--[X] Island Class Assault Ship Deployment 70/135 1 die 25R 82%
--[X] Particle Shield Development (Tech) (New) 0/120 1 die 25R 32%
-[X] Bureaucracy 4 dice +29
--[X] Administrative Assistance 2 dice auto (Orcas)
--[X] Make Political Promises 1 die auto
---[X] Developmentalists: Complete Xenotech Refining Development and have at least 500 processing capacity using the resulting method before 2066 Q1. Complete Liquid Tiberium Fabrication Development before 2066 Q1.
---[X] Militarists: Deploy two phases of GD-3 before 2066 Q1
---[X] Reclamation: Affirm commitment to Reforestation Campaign Preparations
---[X] Socialists: Complete 2 of: Cosmetic Biosculpting, Civil Sensory Augmentics Development, Civil Prosthetics Development, Phage Engineering Development, before 2066 Q1
---[X] Homeland: Complete 1 phase of Secure Yellow Zones before 2066 Q1
---[X] Initiative First: Complete Biowarfare Countermeasures Development before 2066 Q1
---[X] United Yellow List: Complete at least two of: Civil Sensory Augmentics Development, Civil Prosthetics Development, and Fast-Twitch Myomers Development before 2066 Q1
---[X] Open Hand: Do not complete Inferno Gel Development (-1 SCIENCE Meter, -5 PS)
--[X] Predictive Modeling Management 1 die auto

1005/1335R (-30Rpt from Dept of Refits)

This is pretty similar to the first "live" iteration of a Plan from @Lightwhispers (thank you kind sir).

Main changes are:
-Dropping Portals to do the Biowarfare Countermeasures
-Dropping Advanced Articulation Systems to try and slam through Advanced Armor Composites on 2 dice aka a guarantee (so that next turn we slam through Particle Shields and Novahawks)
-Adding a promise to IF to complete the Biowarfare Countermeasures, which should complete this turn.

I've stated before, but I'll state again for the record, my reasoning on the 2 most controversial Promises in my plan.
1.) I have been pretty consistent against doing Inferno Gel from the beginning, as it's been made repeatedly clear by the QM that the project is about Munitions, not Defenses or Fuel or anything else. It's figuring out how to burn things with burning super-napalm that sticks to people and objects. We have plenty of other anti-armor options, including the upcoming GD-3 project (which as I understand and recall will equip non-ZA troopers to have a good chance of taking down most Gana and the like, at minimum). I don't see Inferno Gel as necessary; if we want anti-napalm defenses, we can research those separately.
2.) I view Biowarfare Countermeasures as something not just against Nod, but also against the likes of the Visitors, who if they didn't deploy bioweapons, likely only didn't do so because it was a half-cocked PMC working for a wildcat mining company, and not the full force of their frontline military. A fair number of the "War Crime Weapons" that both GDI and Nod have had lately are derived from scraps of their tech. So.
3.) Because I view that project as very worthwhile anyway, and because, looking at the most recent update, something is happening inside Initiative First to shift how they view Seo and the current GDI Government/Leadership, I am trying to encourage this split, or moderation, or whatever, by doing projects that I'm pretty sure everyone is 100% fine with doing in and of themselves. People may disagree with this logic, but to me, it's a worthwhile shot. We aren't going to suddenly hand the keys to the kingdom over to them, it's pretty clearly something that's a single specific point. I think even Open Hand would have a hard time arguing with this project, and we're making them a promise as well. At worse, IF gets confused and we stay net "neutral" in terms of Support changes with them.

ninjakirito6 · Jul 10, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
No, it explains why there is a difference that is relevant in-quest.

IRL, directed energy weapons are subjected to bans no one bothers to contest because nobody's ready to deploy them anyway. It's like banning the use of unicorn cavalry in warfare; nobody cares enough to push back against it.

In quest, things are more complex. So the question becomes "okay, laser/ion/plasma/particle weapons have the potential to start fires, so why wouldn't they be just as banned/acceptable as inferno gel or other lesser incendiaries, no more and no less?"

And my response to that question was:

"Because there's a difference in how a chemical incendiary you load in a bomb or missile is used, and how a laser cannon is used. The laser is used in direct fire against targets that are, necessarily, in line of sight. As such, it is generally possible for a laser to be used discriminately against active enemy forces, taking various precautions to avoid harming civilians. It is much harder to do this with an incendiary bomb or warhead, which is often going to be thrown at targets well behind the lines or not in direct observation. This distinction may not seem relevant in IRL international law, but there is in practice a difference here."

Those weapons are banned IRL because everyone decided that direct energy weapons like Laser Guns and Ion cannons (which are hit by the double whammy of being hit by the militarizing space treaties as well) are bad not just for the target but also for the potential harm to bystanders in other ways. You are mono focusing on just the fire aspect when both weapons can do a lot of harm to people not being targeted just by being near them. The fact of the matter is that all of those weapons are banned under treaties whose purpose is to limit the damage and harm that war causes. So by just saying "Inferno Gel bad" while also ignoring the others is hypocritical.

You are confusing my point of "IRL it is widely agreed that all of these weapons are unacceptable for one reason or another so why only care about Inferno Gel" with "these weapons are all bad because of the potential indiscriminate fires they could cause so why only Inferno Gel". Because, well, under current international law to use the example you brought up that Laser Cannon would still be banned and that is my point.

Manowl · Jul 10, 2023

Current international law doesn't exist in this world really.

BOTcommander · Jul 10, 2023

Strong lasers can blind someone even with their reflections and our lasers are strong enough to be used as anti-tank weapons -_-

Simon_Jester · Jul 10, 2023

Hunter531 said:
I never said it was a perfect analysis, but it doesn't have to be. Figuring out how many Fusion phases we need to deal with the decommissioning means that we know how many we'll need to do before we are actually adding Energy that can be used for the background stuff. That's fairly useful in deciding what Energy sink-type projects we want to embark on.

One thing I've learned is that there are two kinds of imperfect analyiss.

The first kind leaves out some parts but captures enough parts that what is left can be ignored without significantly changing the conclusions.

The second kind leaves out parts important enough that it is likely to be misleading because including those parts will change the conclusions.

Looking at the four quarters of 2063, by my count we spent:
2063Q4: -2-1-6-1 = -10 Energy
2063Q3: -4-3-3-2-1 = -13 Energy
2063Q2: -4-1-3-1-1-2 = -12 Energy
2063Q1: -4-2-2-2-1 = -11 Energy

This is counting Energy-consuming projects only, of course.

But the point is that we need to bear this level of Energy consumption in mind as an ongoing, consistent pattern. This is more than double the size of the DAE's entire contribution, for instance.

Even without the projected obsolescence of the second-generation fusion plants, this level of Energy consumption alone would require us to continue to build new power plant phases at roughly a rate of one per two turns (with the rest of our Energy needs being covered by miscellaneous other projects in Light Industry, Tiberium, Agriculture, and perhaps elsewhere).

So when we say "we have enough, if we discount the effects of other projects demanding that we supply more Energy," the practical conclusion is effectively the opposite: "we don't have enough, and our existing surplus would disappear within a year or so if we stopped building power plants, and might start getting thinner even if we only dropped to one die per turn for a long time."

In short, we need to plan for a world in which DAE gives us +5 Energy each turn, but our own projects consume an average of about -12 Energy each turn.

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.