Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
- Location
- England
In general, you're correct, but this is Command & Conquer and we're the GDI. Our most famous weapon of war that's still in use to this day is a two-barreled tank, the Mammoth. Avoiding twin-barrel designs stopped being a possibility several decades ago.
Exactly!
More gun > Less gun
And the Juggernaut and MARV are both tribarrel designs
The Mammoth gets a pass because it's a super tank/weapon platform with what has been said in quest a lot of extra stuff in it, trying to do multibilled on a more normal mass produced tank is just asking for a disaster.
Oh, we aren't trying multibarrel on a smaller tank.
We are trying more barrels on the Mammoth.
Now, I kinda prefer the idea of a Mammoth tank which is just absurdly durable, using the freed weight/space for advanced armor, shields, point defense, as well as micromissiles and railguns.
Agreed that is what the Mammoth tank should be slow but powerful and makes nod feel they are going to run out of ammo/energy before even putting a dent to it.
- Location
- The Underdark
This is canon
- Location
- Mobile, Alabama
[X] Plan New Age of Refining
The following post addresses the labor crunch. Things inside should be considered from that prospective. Other factors shall be largely ignored for this post.
---
As doruma1920 so helpfully pointed out in thread post #47,130... the plan as is going to fail pretty hard as the Labor count for just the plan goals is hitting -6 due to that graying population modifier. However that estimate for the plan goals, not the projects currently being done. The main mitigating factor baked into the cake doruma1920 didn't mention is that if you have the new generation power stations completed fast enough old failing plants can be decommissioned pretty much that week. So that factor can handle itself mostly. With +102 to energy your pretty solidly covered there. You just have to build the replacement power plants fast enough.
What that -6 labor doesn't cover is that your actively sinking labor into projects on the side.
[ ] Second Generation Repulsor Plate Factories (-2): Space and airforce going to enjoy this.
[ ] Railgun Munitions Factories (Phase 3) (Munitions) (-1): Automatically happening next turn thanks to the munitions department. At least one more of these hits for by the end of the plan at this completion rate.
[ ] Island-Class Assault Ship Deployment (-2) Was ignorable as a project, now its a labor sink. Time will tell if that was a good move.
[ ] Modular Rapid Assembly Prototype Factory (-1) Which is Steel Talon. Also why I suggested stalling on this project.
[ ] Hand Off Capital Goods to Market (-4 to -5 probably): not addressed by doruma1920... but the private market is going to deplete the labor pool the second they get this.
So somewhere between -11 and -12 added to the -6 from plan commitments. So -17 or -18 labor by end of plan or there abouts. Yeah, that is going to get real ugly. Real fast if not dealt with. Once people can't deny that heads will roll (probably metaphorically) and people's careers will be thrown under metaphorical political busses to ramp it hoping the jump it high enough to get to the next election without crashing and burning. Short term. Blaiming the Treasury and ordering them to fix it shall be a global sport if that goes off.
Looking at what people in Quest want:
Interdepartmental favors:
-Elder services want Bureaucracy AEVA. This is a great idea. Your hitting an incoming tide of senors and retirees, without this they are going to have to start draining the labor pool to keep up with the draining labor pool. With it they'll be able to handle things far better.
-Tiberium: Wants you to do Xenotech Refining Development. This is also a grand idea. After all the Xenos in question are super drone happy. Thus freeing up labor is a result. Expensive probably though.
Political Promises: Its a mine field of labor sinks and political slap fighting as usual.
The Good:
-Homeland: Actually useful as more land means more labor with come to you. Secure those Yellow Zones
-Militarists: GD-3 factories take up no labor for 5 dice and I wish that the Department of Munitions was building those instead of railgun ammo, which take a labor for each one they make.
-Reclamation: Free money and gives you an additional excuse to not to build other labor using agricultural projects. Continue the foresting.
-United Yellow List: Civil Sensory Augmentics and Civil Prosthetics Development are probably needed to keep people in the labor pool anyway. Also researching Fast Twitch Reflexes can be used to stall out that negative labor point going into that MRAP Factory realistically. So free money basically.
Socialists: If your already doing CSA and CP development as you should that part is free real estate. You are already doing CB and you should just for the benifits to the joint regeneration and repair that come as part of that one. The are going to need to deal with cartelige generation to handle things like tails... which a join-fests. These should make techniques available that will add to the labor pool as people that want to work, but physically can't come into focus. Phage Engineering could also have good effects if they can be trained to go after blockages.
The Bad:
-Starbound: Wants your free dice badly. Probably a terrible idea in general to take this one as they also want 20k people in space so are spending their dice twice(at least)... so a bad idea as it will kill your ability to address other issues. They still haven't given you those other stations plans and can't really until the high density housing and the station its built on are completed anyway. They need to pick a plan goal.
-Market Socialist: A terrible idea. Its like they want to repeatedly headbutt the labor crunch button, rapidly, without actually dong anything useful. Those aren't released as a stop gap to the labor crunch in the first place.
-Initiative First and Open Hand: Well the inferno gel factory is a bad idea on its own. Mostly because the Department of Munitions will happily build those and drain your labor pool further, if they take any notable labor pool to operate. Its smarter to leave that button unpushed even ignoring the implied threat to NOD. Countermeasures are more up in the air on if it costs labor to handle those or not mostly. Not bad for researching... but the follow up is possibly more labor pool drained.
The There:
-Developmentalists: They want a XR development as mentioned above fine. If its just an upgraded version of the plan goal that was already agreed to. Though the LTF development is going to make them want follow up. So that part may be a future labor sink.
-Free Market: May be cheap logistics... or may cause them to hire a labor point. Test first before investing whole hog.
---
This brings us to the way you can gain labor force you haven't already done (training updates take time to work through the system.) Three main ways are known to help with the labor shortage. 1) Get more immigrants, 2) Medical tech them back into working age/shape, and 3) Drones and automation to reduce manpower usage. The following options effect this. Listed by department.
-Infrastructure:
Only [Yellow Zone Fortress Towns] may help as those are rally point for yellow Zoners wanting to leave. Thus work in part as labor ports. Sinks up with future Yellow Zone Fortresses in the new Green Zones once the new wave becomes a thing. Though already a plan goal [Karachi] will make it easier to get at the isolated blue zone bubble and may get more labor from there(never mind the actual surrounding areas). Unless you get the place nuked by the neighbors and which point everything goes to hell politically and labor wise. Particularly if you spook that guy into panic nuking by trying to go single turn on the entire thing.
-Heavy Industry:
[Second Generation Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants] are a labor cycler. [Nuuk Heavy Robotics Foundry] is a labor sink you should avoid for now. Though once more drone projects and such are online it may become a labor saver bonus. [Second Generation Repulsorplate Factories] are a labor sinks that will have side effects. Could free up labor from logistics savings or demand more factories with labor costs are built. Unknown.
-Agriculture: [Aquaponics] and [Dairy Ranches] are labor sinks. Dairy Farms are not worth it for half a decade (lack of live stock) and Aquaponics could use some serious automation. [Organ Farming Programs] are another way to get people back in the work force.
-Tiberium: Mostly only effects the building of new IHG processing plants as mining the stuff is so automated anyway. [Forgotten Experimentation] may help help (health-wise) as more people back in the work force. [Securing Yellow Zones] is going to have a hard time not getting you more labor really. Even if they aren't there now they will come. [Xenotech Tiberium Refinery] is a tech about automation and just knowing how they work with help with automation elsewhere.
-Orbital: Deals with such small numbers the main labor gain is from people being less afraid to have kids. Though that is a long term bonus.
-Services: [AECA] will free up some amount of manpower by reducing people needed to complete the same amount of work. Literally automating the paperwork. [Autodoc] will help med tech be more common by letting less medical professionals handle more caseloads with less fatigue. [Cosmetic Biosculpting] is a gateway tech if nothing else. After that its a pile of techs for this kind of stuff. [Wet AI] is manpower grown in a lab... particularly if its handling the drone swarms. [Drone Control Hub] is an industrial miracle on this front. This department needs more dice investment to conquer the labor shortage.
-Military: The factories eat labor like candy. Needs automation badly. The Zone armor production alone is worse that Karachi for a labor sink all told.
-Bureaucracy: The great enabler of other people using up the labor pool.
---
Over all my suggestion stall or stop the labor crisis are to:
Get new labor sources:
-[Secure the Yellow Zones] your main possible source of new labor in the short term.
-Resolve [Karachi]. Preferably slowly(at first) as your dealing with a possibly fanatic backed with Nuclear weapons. If he blinks your golden, if he doesn't it going to get super messy real fast. I've said before 2 dice on Karachi and see how he reacts. This warlord is the biggest wildcard catalyst for renewed large scale violence. Once that warlord is dealt with you get new labor immigrants (Yellow Zone and the isolated Blue Zone).
Get people back in the work force:
-The graying population issue is offically a large scale factor. This can cause you issues on two main fronts. First people are leaving the work force for medical reasons. So health techs need to be researched to deal with that or at least slow that down. Your natural internal population can in no way compensate for this right now.
-Make sure the logistics trail of this doesn't bloat the governmental agencies dealing with a growth industry of handling them. Medical and Burecratic as well and costumer goods. So Services needs those right AEVAs now. The longer you wait the more resources that will eat up and the harder things are going to be to slow down the tide of old upon you.
-Research and deploy medical tech to help deal with this and stall out the old tide. Your only other real choices are they die off (thus aren't a drag on man power) or they get uploaded into new bodies and that is a wee bit not in your wheel house yet. Just abandoning them is not going to work. NOD shouldn't be able to take the moral high ground of being able to send you endless snippy e-Mails about are you living in 'Logan's Run' yet? Just getting it to the point you can have people retire into jobs handling older people is a boon.
-Have enough other resources to pay for all that health tech/care.
Get automation and such going wide scale:
-Research the drone swarm tech. Research automation tech so you need less manpower for the same work.
-Don't let the Department of Munitions get you fired. Get those military factory labor costs down.
-Have enough other resources to pay for all that automation.
Seriously the Services depart really need to soak up the free dice for a while.
---
As doruma1920 so helpfully pointed out in thread post #47,130... the plan as is going to fail pretty hard as the Labor count for just the plan goals is hitting -6 due to that graying population modifier. However that estimate for the plan goals, not the projects currently being done. The main mitigating factor baked into the cake doruma1920 didn't mention is that if you have the new generation power stations completed fast enough old failing plants can be decommissioned pretty much that week. So that factor can handle itself mostly. With +102 to energy your pretty solidly covered there. You just have to build the replacement power plants fast enough.
What that -6 labor doesn't cover is that your actively sinking labor into projects on the side.
[ ] Second Generation Repulsor Plate Factories (-2): Space and airforce going to enjoy this.
[ ] Railgun Munitions Factories (Phase 3) (Munitions) (-1): Automatically happening next turn thanks to the munitions department. At least one more of these hits for by the end of the plan at this completion rate.
[ ] Island-Class Assault Ship Deployment (-2) Was ignorable as a project, now its a labor sink. Time will tell if that was a good move.
[ ] Modular Rapid Assembly Prototype Factory (-1) Which is Steel Talon. Also why I suggested stalling on this project.
[ ] Hand Off Capital Goods to Market (-4 to -5 probably): not addressed by doruma1920... but the private market is going to deplete the labor pool the second they get this.
So somewhere between -11 and -12 added to the -6 from plan commitments. So -17 or -18 labor by end of plan or there abouts. Yeah, that is going to get real ugly. Real fast if not dealt with. Once people can't deny that heads will roll (probably metaphorically) and people's careers will be thrown under metaphorical political busses to ramp it hoping the jump it high enough to get to the next election without crashing and burning. Short term. Blaiming the Treasury and ordering them to fix it shall be a global sport if that goes off.
Looking at what people in Quest want:
Interdepartmental favors:
-Elder services want Bureaucracy AEVA. This is a great idea. Your hitting an incoming tide of senors and retirees, without this they are going to have to start draining the labor pool to keep up with the draining labor pool. With it they'll be able to handle things far better.
-Tiberium: Wants you to do Xenotech Refining Development. This is also a grand idea. After all the Xenos in question are super drone happy. Thus freeing up labor is a result. Expensive probably though.
Political Promises: Its a mine field of labor sinks and political slap fighting as usual.
The Good:
-Homeland: Actually useful as more land means more labor with come to you. Secure those Yellow Zones
-Militarists: GD-3 factories take up no labor for 5 dice and I wish that the Department of Munitions was building those instead of railgun ammo, which take a labor for each one they make.
-Reclamation: Free money and gives you an additional excuse to not to build other labor using agricultural projects. Continue the foresting.
-United Yellow List: Civil Sensory Augmentics and Civil Prosthetics Development are probably needed to keep people in the labor pool anyway. Also researching Fast Twitch Reflexes can be used to stall out that negative labor point going into that MRAP Factory realistically. So free money basically.
Socialists: If your already doing CSA and CP development as you should that part is free real estate. You are already doing CB and you should just for the benifits to the joint regeneration and repair that come as part of that one. The are going to need to deal with cartelige generation to handle things like tails... which a join-fests. These should make techniques available that will add to the labor pool as people that want to work, but physically can't come into focus. Phage Engineering could also have good effects if they can be trained to go after blockages.
The Bad:
-Starbound: Wants your free dice badly. Probably a terrible idea in general to take this one as they also want 20k people in space so are spending their dice twice(at least)... so a bad idea as it will kill your ability to address other issues. They still haven't given you those other stations plans and can't really until the high density housing and the station its built on are completed anyway. They need to pick a plan goal.
-Market Socialist: A terrible idea. Its like they want to repeatedly headbutt the labor crunch button, rapidly, without actually dong anything useful. Those aren't released as a stop gap to the labor crunch in the first place.
-Initiative First and Open Hand: Well the inferno gel factory is a bad idea on its own. Mostly because the Department of Munitions will happily build those and drain your labor pool further, if they take any notable labor pool to operate. Its smarter to leave that button unpushed even ignoring the implied threat to NOD. Countermeasures are more up in the air on if it costs labor to handle those or not mostly. Not bad for researching... but the follow up is possibly more labor pool drained.
The There:
-Developmentalists: They want a XR development as mentioned above fine. If its just an upgraded version of the plan goal that was already agreed to. Though the LTF development is going to make them want follow up. So that part may be a future labor sink.
-Free Market: May be cheap logistics... or may cause them to hire a labor point. Test first before investing whole hog.
---
This brings us to the way you can gain labor force you haven't already done (training updates take time to work through the system.) Three main ways are known to help with the labor shortage. 1) Get more immigrants, 2) Medical tech them back into working age/shape, and 3) Drones and automation to reduce manpower usage. The following options effect this. Listed by department.
-Infrastructure:
Only [Yellow Zone Fortress Towns] may help as those are rally point for yellow Zoners wanting to leave. Thus work in part as labor ports. Sinks up with future Yellow Zone Fortresses in the new Green Zones once the new wave becomes a thing. Though already a plan goal [Karachi] will make it easier to get at the isolated blue zone bubble and may get more labor from there(never mind the actual surrounding areas). Unless you get the place nuked by the neighbors and which point everything goes to hell politically and labor wise. Particularly if you spook that guy into panic nuking by trying to go single turn on the entire thing.
-Heavy Industry:
[Second Generation Continuous Cycle Fusion Plants] are a labor cycler. [Nuuk Heavy Robotics Foundry] is a labor sink you should avoid for now. Though once more drone projects and such are online it may become a labor saver bonus. [Second Generation Repulsorplate Factories] are a labor sinks that will have side effects. Could free up labor from logistics savings or demand more factories with labor costs are built. Unknown.
-Agriculture: [Aquaponics] and [Dairy Ranches] are labor sinks. Dairy Farms are not worth it for half a decade (lack of live stock) and Aquaponics could use some serious automation. [Organ Farming Programs] are another way to get people back in the work force.
-Tiberium: Mostly only effects the building of new IHG processing plants as mining the stuff is so automated anyway. [Forgotten Experimentation] may help help (health-wise) as more people back in the work force. [Securing Yellow Zones] is going to have a hard time not getting you more labor really. Even if they aren't there now they will come. [Xenotech Tiberium Refinery] is a tech about automation and just knowing how they work with help with automation elsewhere.
-Orbital: Deals with such small numbers the main labor gain is from people being less afraid to have kids. Though that is a long term bonus.
-Services: [AECA] will free up some amount of manpower by reducing people needed to complete the same amount of work. Literally automating the paperwork. [Autodoc] will help med tech be more common by letting less medical professionals handle more caseloads with less fatigue. [Cosmetic Biosculpting] is a gateway tech if nothing else. After that its a pile of techs for this kind of stuff. [Wet AI] is manpower grown in a lab... particularly if its handling the drone swarms. [Drone Control Hub] is an industrial miracle on this front. This department needs more dice investment to conquer the labor shortage.
-Military: The factories eat labor like candy. Needs automation badly. The Zone armor production alone is worse that Karachi for a labor sink all told.
-Bureaucracy: The great enabler of other people using up the labor pool.
---
Over all my suggestion stall or stop the labor crisis are to:
Get new labor sources:
-[Secure the Yellow Zones] your main possible source of new labor in the short term.
-Resolve [Karachi]. Preferably slowly(at first) as your dealing with a possibly fanatic backed with Nuclear weapons. If he blinks your golden, if he doesn't it going to get super messy real fast. I've said before 2 dice on Karachi and see how he reacts. This warlord is the biggest wildcard catalyst for renewed large scale violence. Once that warlord is dealt with you get new labor immigrants (Yellow Zone and the isolated Blue Zone).
Get people back in the work force:
-The graying population issue is offically a large scale factor. This can cause you issues on two main fronts. First people are leaving the work force for medical reasons. So health techs need to be researched to deal with that or at least slow that down. Your natural internal population can in no way compensate for this right now.
-Make sure the logistics trail of this doesn't bloat the governmental agencies dealing with a growth industry of handling them. Medical and Burecratic as well and costumer goods. So Services needs those right AEVAs now. The longer you wait the more resources that will eat up and the harder things are going to be to slow down the tide of old upon you.
-Research and deploy medical tech to help deal with this and stall out the old tide. Your only other real choices are they die off (thus aren't a drag on man power) or they get uploaded into new bodies and that is a wee bit not in your wheel house yet. Just abandoning them is not going to work. NOD shouldn't be able to take the moral high ground of being able to send you endless snippy e-Mails about are you living in 'Logan's Run' yet? Just getting it to the point you can have people retire into jobs handling older people is a boon.
-Have enough other resources to pay for all that health tech/care.
Get automation and such going wide scale:
-Research the drone swarm tech. Research automation tech so you need less manpower for the same work.
-Don't let the Department of Munitions get you fired. Get those military factory labor costs down.
-Have enough other resources to pay for all that automation.
Seriously the Services depart really need to soak up the free dice for a while.
There's one big additional option, albeit a long term one that we're ill-suited towards.
Convince people to have more children.
This is a matter we haven't even fully figured out in reality, but to make a baby boom happen we need a number of things:
- Peace
- Free time
- Abundant space and resources
- Hope for the future
We're working towards all of these in certain ways, and I don't think we have all the tools necessary for it yet, but I think it's possible and will have consequences echoing into the sequelquest. Extending people's lives and especially their youth will also increase humanity's potential to bounce back.
Convince people to have more children.
This is a matter we haven't even fully figured out in reality, but to make a baby boom happen we need a number of things:
- Peace
- Free time
- Abundant space and resources
- Hope for the future
We're working towards all of these in certain ways, and I don't think we have all the tools necessary for it yet, but I think it's possible and will have consequences echoing into the sequelquest. Extending people's lives and especially their youth will also increase humanity's potential to bounce back.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I think you've kind of arbitrarily decided what some of the effects are. You're not wrong that there's a problem, but one thing I'd like to point out is that I suspect the economy doesn't instantly crash and burn when we're at, say, -5 or -10 Labor. That's most likely to express itself as reduced efficiency, people being paid overtime to work longer to compensate for positions that cannot be filled, and so on. It's bad but not insurmountable.
It's sort of like how hitting -1 Energy isn't going to mean every electricity-using thing in all of GDI shuts down simultaneously. It's going to mean rolling blackouts and so on, which is bad, but again, not insurmountable. We're actually well positioned to ride this out, what with (1) the part where the labor crunch is obviously caused by factors that aren't easily controlled, (2) the part where we're working on automation and prostheses to get people back into the workforce, and (3) the part where we have massive Political Support and that's unlikely to change in the near future.
Furthermore, there's considerable promise from some things that are already on the radar, notably Visitortech optical implants. If we can get a workable prosthetic eye design going that the average blind GDI citizen can use, we could get some real boost out of that.
Agreed on the former, disagree on the latter- though we'll be doing it anyway. The problem is that there's no obvious reason to assume we can operate a Visitor-based refinery as efficiently as they can, or even as efficiently as we operate our own refineries.
It's not that I oppose the project, it's just that I don't think it'll help much, since we're not building a direct copy of a Visitor refinery, and ultimately the tech is less about duplicating Visitor automation than about duplicating the refineries themselves.
Bear in mind that these are uninhabited wastelands we reclaimed from Red Zones. They have negligible population and refugees have no way to get there because crossing a Red Zone is death.
Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of obvious ways for us to change our immediate policies towards this.
- Location
- USA
Sigh...
Uses. Plural. As in more than one use.
One of those being killing vehicles.
I am curious to find out what the other uses might be.
Perhaps it is only multiple different ways of being a fire weapon and you would be completely correct.
But considering nod obviously did something we can't currently replicate with it I'm thinking some interesting chemical stuff is involved that could have implications in other areas besides weapons.
We will apparently permanently lose access to inferno gel in a few turns. I don't think on its own it's a higher priority than most other techs, but it is now on a timer and that DOES bump its priority up for me.
To quote Ithillid
I don't want to lose any techs. At all. I want to see the interesting stuff.
We got t-glass and tiberium storage from a roll of 5. Inferno Gel is a 38.
It is not ridiculous that inferno gel could lead to interesting things and I think it's worth doing before it's lost forever.
It's definitely a wedge issue, but I think it's not the only thing to blame here. We had 20 new projects, and only a 4 hour moratorium in which to examine them before voting began, which really isn't enough time to give them all the attention they deserve. As such, there wasn't much discussion before the moratorium ended, and Inferno Gel kept discussions to a minimum afterwards. Thankfully, we aren't likely to get a similar glut next turn so there should be more discussion then.
- Location
- USA
To be clear, I'm not saying do inferno gel this turn.
The argument that the new alloys and particle shields need to be done before designing the new vehicles was very compelling and I agree with it.
But we definitely need to spare a dice for inferno gel before it goes away.
The argument that the new alloys and particle shields need to be done before designing the new vehicles was very compelling and I agree with it.
But we definitely need to spare a dice for inferno gel before it goes away.
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GDI's citizens have a major fear of food deficits after TW3. The Treasury has a major fear of power deficits after the Regency War.
It is even interesting how the GDI-public would perceive a situation where we would take promises and an open hand and the first initiative.
Theoretically, they do not contradict each other, the initiative has another requirement, biosecurity.
But in fact, I am against the inferno gel, it is not so effective that I would seriously want it, I can't imagine peaceful ways to use it, and the first initiative wants it and the open hand doesn't want it, and we sort of crush the first, and I would like to strengthen the second.
Theoretically, they do not contradict each other, the initiative has another requirement, biosecurity.
But in fact, I am against the inferno gel, it is not so effective that I would seriously want it, I can't imagine peaceful ways to use it, and the first initiative wants it and the open hand doesn't want it, and we sort of crush the first, and I would like to strengthen the second.
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Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
This is the last I'll touch on Inferno Gel this turn, but here's an idea. We research Inferno Gel before it goes away, then afterwards we hold a mini vote on whether the Department of Munitions goes through with production. This is not without precedent, something similar happened when we did two phases of Liquid Tiberium Power in one turn. We were given the option to not complete the second plant and not eat the political cost. We can do the research and get whatever goodies come out with it.
- Location
- his hidden lair
The problem is forgiveness has very little to with moving on. I don't doubt the Open Hand party sincerely wants forgiveness and thinks forgiveness is the way forward. That doesn't mean it's going to be well received by a GDI public that views itself as fundamentally the good guys staving off multiple NOD induced apocalypses. I think someone noted, the Open Hand's ban on Inferno Gel has removed the PS cost to develop it.
That tells me on this specific issue, the Open Hand is probably doing more harm than good for their own political prospects.
And that's not necessarily wrong, but getting caught up on the moral implications of a single tertiary weapon system doesn't actually make the world that much of a better place. The moral weight being attributed to this choice seems wholly out of proportion to it's actual bearing given the scale of the conflicts and the stakes we're talking about. Moreover, I don't think this is an argument that GDI civilians want to hear from someone who used to be at the other end of the equation. I don't think most of GDI's populace are all that interested in forgiving NOD at this point, especially when the alternative is listening IF give a thundering of victimization.
Considering the goal of the inferno gel is a weapon that reduces the sensors and optics on the surface of a combat vehicle and mission kills it by destroying its soft systems? The real joke of the matter is that GDI doesn't want to deploy inferno gel to asphyxiate vehicle crews, they just want to ruin all the exposed systems that an armored vehicle still needs to fight.
Inferno Gel has the interest of our armed forces because it's a less lethal way of effectively knocking out enemy armor. So please, tell me what methods GDI has to knock out the exposed systems on a vehicle without necessarily risking all the occupants of that armored vehicle?
Why would you want the ability to parse and follow more complicated tactics and use tools amongst your footsoldiers? To better operate independently (like Stahl deployed them) and to take better advantage of terrain and circumstances? And there's presumably a real chance that Gana could already rebel given they're all wearing slave circuits as a matter of course.
At a minimum, the wet-ai tech being used to control them was derived from wet-ai used on humans, and probably requires a fairly developed brain to use. So I do find the idea that these things are pretty damn questionable. There are definitely sapient gana out there (though they potentially don't identify with their more disposable kin). Is Haddi a slave? Probably not in the sense of cybernetically implanted with a loyalty chip. Nut indoctrinated from birth in a theocracy? Given significantly less latitude to independently grow and express its own personhood than Erewhon? I'm pretty sure CPS would take umbrage with how NOD raises Haddi and its kin.
Especially because unless we ever have a chance to encounter and study a 'lesser' gana like an Afanc that wasn't cybernetically shackled to the NOD warmachine, it's much harder to actually gauge how intelligent the creatures are in their own right. The fact that NOD seems to be trending towards using gana to command things Bunyips and Afanc suggests there's far more going on there than we currently know.
Any uncertainty on this matter is too much given the moral implications of NOD's growing interest in making biologically engineered subordinate servitor species. And until I see some very compelling evidence I'm definitely not going to assume the Gana are being treated as equal partners in NOD's religious project, especially when it only takes one Warlord to abuse this power of life and death over entire new sapient species.
I'm not trying to say we shouldn't trade with NOD, I completely agree with the simple fact that this is not an ideal world and that the risk of nuclear war outweigh the moral high ground of refusing any détente with the NOD warlords. I just dislike the idea of not acknowledging what is a much larger moral compromise because of political jockeying over whether or not the GDI military gets a new soft kill weapon system or not.
I won't pretend there are situations where it's going to be used outside of its official mission statement, though I think GDI is probably going to be substantially better about that than most modern militaries.
But at the risk of moving goal posts, I think we also have to talk about one of the chief issues you've brought up with incendiaries... their ability to indiscriminately spread beyond the blast radius. And while I can't say that will never happen, I think we also have to acknowledge Earth's biosphere outside of carefully maintained man-made biomes is practically gone. The risk of most battlefields being filled with combustibles that can spread a fire are distinctly limited outside of more urbanized battlefields- which seem to be pretty uncommon in most of our skirmishing these days and are the one battlefield I can see both the soldiers on the ground and the rest of the military being incredibly reluctant to use inferno gel.
I think this takes it too far. Initiative First is far and away more likely to contain people who are victims or know victims of NOD incendiary terror tactics than the Open Hand (and no, that doesn't mean the IF is better either- it means they have more powerful ammo to use). IF are xenophobes, but I give it good odds a lot of them are xenophobes precisely because the toll of the psychological and emotional damages a society fighting multiple world wars, looking down the barrel of the apocalypse, and alien genocide rather than the literal Karen caricature we voters point at and laugh at to feel better about ourselves.
Meanwhile, as I've broached before, the advocate against inferno gel was a former clergy man of an order of warrior monks that considered burning heretics in this holy flame a sacred thing. This is bad fucking PR for the Open Hand that's trivial to cast as former victimizers calling for restraint and victims calling for implementation. It is pitting this tenuous new call for healing and looking to the future against this long running current of estrangement, bitterness, and resentment that a lot of GDI's society probably feels to a much lesser extent than the IF.
Inferno Gel lost the PS Cost. GDI society feels better about implementing it because the Open Hand spoke against it and IF spoke for it. The IF stance is clearly found to be more sympathetic by the broader swath of the population, and ignoring that because we like the OH better is going to make easy political hay for the IF. All we do by openly agreeing with the OH is pit them against a larger spectrum of GDI's political base. Regardless of whether we implement Inferno Gel or not, staking it as a concession to the Open Hand is a terrible idea that gives IF ammo to use against OH and makes the IF more sympathetic to the wider GDI body politique.
We cannot afford to be so blinded by contempt for IF that we misunderstand why their message is compelling, and why the public is definitely more in their corner over this showdown than the Open Hand's. And I think its dangerous to assume its entirely because of apocalyptic NIMBYism and regional prejudice when its just as likely bred of the immense strain and trauma of the 21st century on GDI society. If the thread just assumes they're going to throw some WASP or different shade of old conservative raving on the political stage, we're going to be blindsided when they use some photogenic burn victim from TW3 or something to that effect. A lot of people hate NOD for better or for worse, and a lot of them have at least as understandable personal reasons as anyone who hates or hated GDI. By turning this into a cage match between IF and OH, IF is given a ton of room to evoke that and that's probably going to resonate far more with the broader GDI public than anyone wants to admit.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
One of the things that's made this whole discussion incredibly exhausting and distracting (I think at this point inferno gel has gotten more attention than all the twenty other new project and tech options FUCKING COMBINED)...
One of those things is how rapidly the debate flows back and forth between "it's about what is right and wrong" and "it's about the internal political dynamics of Initiative First and the motivations that underlie this whole political shitfight" and "it's about what is popular with GDI's public" and "it's about what violates OTL international law" and so on and so on and so on. And I kind of get the sense that you're doing that flow thing.
Honestly, I think the best way to deal with this is to just not engage with inferno gel in disgust.
We have a huge cornucopia of other, more interesting technologies with a lot more potential coming out. We're already going to lose one of our discretionary Military dice soon what with the Bureau of Refits. Don't get me wrong, BoR does good work. But importantly, creating them means we have less freedom to direct dice to projects we approve of, because we still have to finish certain specific key projects and there are fewer dice to do it with.
Is this really a good use of any more of our time and mental energy? I'm trying to get some perspective on this here.
Eh. I wouldn't be too sure. Among other things, we do a lot of our fighting in Yellow Zones, or in former Yellow Zones where people used to live under different conditions. Ideally all GDI citizens are in nice heavily built ferrocrete buildings that don't spread fires, but if we go outside that, I don't know what Nod's citizens are living in. It's entirely possible that they've got a lot of stuff like cheap easily mass-printed structural plastics and shit.
But this is at least a valid point about the realities of the Tiberian Earth.
I get what you're saying but this no longer feels actionable. Like... what do we do about it? I personally have no particular desire to invent Big Fire Weapon specifically to gratify people with a revenge boner against Nod, even if I acknowledge that they came by this revenge boner honestly.
- Location
- his hidden lair
It isn't. As someone who pretty much ignited this particular debate with 'I think this was a political misstep from OH' and then segued into raving about the evils of genetic engineering. I've definitely been part of the flow, and I apologize for that, it hasn't been a conscious attempt to shift goal posts.
I mean, most of our fighting is likely to be skirmishing over Tiberium fields, we're deliberately not pushing into NOD population centers for fear of cornering them and igniting a nuclear war. I sincerely hope less of NOD's people are living in shanty towns by this point, but its probably still way more common than I'd like.
Personally, I think throwing our hands up in disgust is perfectly valid. There's certainly enough useful things to roll out besides Inferno gel, I just think we need to leave OH's money on the table if we're not going to research it. I don't think taking that offer is ultimately good for them either. I sincerely am sorry if this whole debate has been overly stressful, I know it's shifted all over the place, and I think part of that was ironically born out of resenting what a minor issue inferno gel should be, but it's rather clear I haven't exactly been dragging it out of the spotlight in a productive manner.
I know we probably won't be able to get to them for a while but I'm completely fascinated by the prospects of stasis boxes. While they probably won't have a huge impact during this initial stage I think they're a really important project for actually better understanding the science of a lot of other things we're dealing with. Being able to potentially freeze frame capture a fusion ignition sequence so we can optimize our fusion reactors is really appealing. They're probably one of the best avenues we have of understanding how STUs work and derive their properties, as a stasis box potentially lets us examine synthesized unstable transuranics and run a much larger and longer battery of tests and compare them alongside STUs.
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- Pronouns
- He/It/Argh!
It just doesn't stop burning! XD
- Location
- USA
You are correct but now the gel has a timer on it. If it didn't waiting till other stuff was done would be completely fine with me.
I mean islands are happening for the same reason. They were going to be phased out so we jumped on them.
I get what you're saying but look at it from the other direction. Some people have been trying to do inferno gel for a long time and now it's dead because IF suddenly likes it and that's a poison pill for a lot of people.
Let's just agree that there is frustration on both sides of the debate.
I apologize for my part in it but the time limit and the sudden political implications had a rather... intensifying... effect on the discussion around it. Especially since we were about to do it to burn off some PS.
I'll drop it. Very sorry for the trouble.