Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

MSH · Jul 11, 2023

The way kinetic barriers work, I don't think sonics would be very good at bypassing them. It would likely stress the barrier, but would also "filter" the dangerous frequencies from reaching the target.

It's possible this is more effective against kinetic barriers than other weapons, but they are made with the intention of stopping hyper-relativistic pellets launched by the mass effect. Seems questionable.

Simon_Jester · Jul 11, 2023

mmgaballah said:
Ah , but they will in the future discover that they are great against Turians and not bad at bypassing kinetic barriers , the fact that they are effective against visitors is more than enough for the army to keep them updated and in reserve just in case

[shrugs]

I don't know if sonic weapons will be highly effective against turians, and I'm surprised you do unless you've shot a turian with a sonic cannon at some point in which case I just hope I'm not standing next to you when they respond with a grudge.

But more broadly, weapons that are overwhelmingly likely to be retired from active service, even if they are kept in development, are different from weapons that are in active service. Sonic weapons require fiddly and valuable materials to make, or are fiddly and inefficient, or both. They'll be in service if and only if there's a specific good reason to keep them in service, even if the people in lab coats are still playing around with them while they're out of service.

MSH said:
The way kinetic barriers work, I don't think sonics would be very good at bypassing them. It would likely stress the barrier, but would also "filter" the dangerous frequencies from reaching the target.

It's possible this is more effective against kinetic barriers than other weapons, but they are made with the intention of stopping hyper-relativistic pellets launched by the mass effect. Seems questionable.

On the other hand, you can still hear through a kinetic barrier. And they don't seem to stop gas exchange- they won't protect you from inhaling poison gas, will they?

Kinetic barriers seem to be to some extent velocity-dependent and momentum-dependent systems; how they interact with sound waves is a tricky question.

MSH · Jul 11, 2023

Kinetic barriers react against kinetic force over a certain threshold, in the lore of Mass Effect. Sonic weapons produce high amounts of kinetic force. That the air is low mass shouldn't make a difference - the shaved pellets that mass effect guns use weigh barely more than the air.

They might not work well against sonics naively, but I think you'd literally just have to change the settings to fix that.

Night_stalker · Jul 11, 2023

[X] Plan The Fire Shall Not Touch Them

Simon_Jester · Jul 11, 2023

MSH said:
Kinetic barriers react against kinetic force over a certain threshold, in the lore of Mass Effect. Sonic weapons produce high amounts of kinetic force. That the air is low mass shouldn't make a difference - the shaved pellets that mass effect guns use weigh barely more than the air.

They might not work well against sonics naively, but I think you'd literally just have to change the settings to fix that.

The effects of sonic weapons compared to solid darts are going to be complicated. In real life there are a lot of things that stop solid projectiles quite effectively but are very permeable to vibrations, and the best kinds of vibration insulation tend to be things like foams that are utterly useless at stopping projectiles. "Sonic weapons produce high amounts of kinetic force" is a complicated statement- if I shatter something by shaking it, that's not the same as imparting momentum transfer into it by pushing it in one direction.

This is not an area where I'd claim a confident ability to easily deal with the problem, though it's not impossible that kinetic barriers would be able to stop the effect.

Nottheunmaker · Jul 11, 2023

Wet AI is definitely something we want to pursue, but I strongly believe there's more immediately important Service projects to do first. Both because they'll solve more immediate problems, and because they'll likely positively impact Wet AI development. There's also projects in other departments I think should be done that'll be good for them, beyond the uses they'll have on their own.

To tackle them in no particular order, Civil Sensory Augmentics Development and Civil Prosthetics Development are important for learning how to get meat to talk to rocks. We are going to need to be able for the Wet AI talk to our electronic infrastructure. Plus they're important to fighting our labor problem.

Side note, it's equal parts funny and sad that the prosthetics development seems less about working out how to use the technology, more about hiding what it is by recombing the methodology behind them and slapping on GDI colors. Which, when the tech comes from evil cultists, an evil AI, and evil aliens- well, can't blame them.

Biowarfare Countermeasures Development and Phage Engineering Development are very good ways to protect a fledgling Wet AI, learn about biological engineering, and of course protect GDI citizens. I'd almost call them required developments. They're also progress cheap, which is naturally appealing. That engineered phages would likely be effective Biowarfare Countermeasures themselves helps, and would probably combine into one project. Anti-Bioweapon Phages.

This one isn't directly helpful, but I also think Rage Engine Development should be considered. It and our Hallucinagen developments would be a good way to regulate such an AI's behavior if it had something we'd considered a mental disorder, like anxiety or obsessive behaviors.

We can't forget our existing projects either. Autodocs will be critical in caring for an organic components, in addition to the already long list of reasons we want them. Cosmetic Biosculpting is also important. Being able to shape this AI on cellular level, even if only in minor ways, could make all the difference. I wouldn't even consider Wet AI dev until these two get done.

Moving to other departments, definitely want Agriculture to be working on Lab Meat and Organ Farms. Anything that let's us make thinking meats without having to take them out of a person will be a requirement for Wet AI to work.

I also think North Boston and Aberdeen are critical. Brains and computer chips do different things better, and taking the pure number crunching off the meat's plate should definitely cut down on much gray matter we need.

There's also military projects that have potential. Fast Twitch Myomer and Advanced Articulation are good for biomimicry, which in turn might be helpful for developing tools for the Wet AI to use. Admittedly that reasoning is a stretch, but they're pretty strong projects on their own anyway.

As can be seen, that's a long list. And it doesn't cover any possible deployment projects that follow on from this, and they're very unlikely to be cheap. But frankly, I remember how Erewhon started out. I'd much rather go overkill on a variety of projects that are useful in their own rights, then have to figure out how to keep a sickly AI alive long enough to find out what it takes to fix it. If it even can be fixed.

Rakuhn · Jul 11, 2023

I've seen a few questions in regards to the stockpiles. The key is that it's not really about the food. It's about being better able to handle refugees and continue to offer services to them.

Which, even outside of nuclear war, is only going to become more important as tiberium mutation accelerates and more regions become uninhabitable over night (e.g. the mountain explosion).

[ ] Strategic Food Stockpile Construction (Phase 5)
While localized caches are useful, more central positioning and expansion of existing larger stockpiles will be critical for allowing GDI to centralize refugee populations and continue to offer key services.
(Progress 78/170: 10 resources per die) (+2 Food in Reserve, -3 Food)

Derpmind · Jul 11, 2023

Gonna go over my opinions on the new projects. Some of this will be a bit redundent, as current plans are already doing many of these.

Ithillid said:
[ ] Advanced Tunnel Borer Development (Tech) (New)
While digging holes is something that GDI has gotten remarkably good at, the Brotherhood was at one point a master of the field, connecting large parts of the world through a network of tunnel systems, allowing them to move forces safe from GDI airborne and orbital surveillance. Adapting their technology, if not their ambitions is likely to open new areas where the Initiative can make connections, and speed construction.
(Progress 0/80: 15 resources per die)

Absolutely we need to do this. Anything that might improve Vein Mines, as one of our major income sources, is highly needed yesterday. Even if it only has a small effect, we're going to be doing many Vein Mines in the future. This also seems likely to have other effects elsewhere, hopefully stuff that will help further fortify Karaz Himalaya. (AKA BZ-18.)

[ ] Offshore Tiberium Harvester Stations (Phase 4) (New)
With the Initiative Navy becoming noticeably stronger and the systematic reduction in the Brotherhood's ability to contest inshore development, it is now sufficiently safe for new offshore harvesting stations in the Bering Strait, off the coast of Australia and New Zealand, and a number of other sites.
(Progress 0/150: 20 resources per die) (+20 resources per turn)

This is great for us. We have a really big income goal, and this gets us a bit more income without exerting ZOCOM or costing us CG. That said, there's also no rush to do this yet, so it's one more thing we want among other Infrastructure stuff.

[ ] High Energy Capacitors Development (Tech) (New)
While capacitors are nothing new, Visitor based designs are nearly twice as efficient as any currently produced formats, and therefore have a number of places where a better capacitor is deeply needed. While there are obvious answers like electromagnetic weaponry, there are applications everywhere from fusion reactors and computer chips, to medical equipment.
(Progress 0/60: 20 resources per die)

One of the earliest projects we built was a capacitor factory. They're used everywhere, not least in the railguns our military uses massive amounts of. I predict this is going to have big effects once rolled out, so we really want to do this research soon.

[ ] Organ Farming Programs (Tech) (New) (MS)
While producing human compatible organs in vitro on a large scale is still beyond the Initiative's capabilities, there are other options, most notably pigs, which can be used to substantially simplify the process of producing a number of different organ types, opening up the supply substantially.
(Progress 0/120: 10 resources per die) (-4 Consumer Goods, +2 Health)

I think this is another must take. On the one hand, we have an impending labor shortage, and last time we dealt with that using prosthetic medical technology, so cloned human organs should hopefully help put many people back on their feet. On the other hand, this helps advance our medical technology, which is always a high priority for us in general. On the third cloned hand, this is a Mad Science project using Agriculture dice: I can't wait for us to have literal organ farms!

[ ] Xenotech Tiberium Refinery Development (Tech) (New)
While there are many mysteries of the Visitors' Tiberium refining capabilities, and most have not even seen the first steps towards solutions, a dark horse program started during the Third Tiberium War has borne fruit, even as it was running out of samples to test with. Although far from the efficiencies observed during the war, it is a substantial upgrade to GDI's ability to manufacture using Tiberium.
(Progress 0/180: 35 resources per die)

This is an obvious high priority project. This gets us more STUs, and we have an endless hunger for STUs. We also have a plan goal for more refining capacity, so it only makes sense to do this research first before building more refineries. Here's to hoping it won't cost too much to roll them out.

[ ] Liquid Tiberium Refining Development (Tech) (New)
While liquid Tiberium is distinctly unstable, this actually has some significant potential upsides - namely that it is much easier to break apart into molecules. The tricky part is doing that in a way that both produces something useful, and does not result in rapid unscheduled violent disassembly of the refineries due to runaway exothermic events.
(Progress 0/180: 20 resources per die)

It's important that we work on this immediately. Our Vein Mines keep running into pockets of liquid tib, and we desperately need a way to safely deal with liquid tib so we can avoid more massive explosions with planet-wide effects. And we can't stop doing Vein Mines because underground tib and underground liquid tib is running rampant.

It also sounds like we could gain resources from refining liquid tib... I can't say that really matters though, and GDI focuses on safety over profit anyways.

[ ] Civil Sensory Augmentics Development (Tech) (New)
While many of the Visitors' weapons were constructions of alien alloys and devastating power, some of the equipment is actually small enough to integrate into the human body. While few of these are particularly useful when human mounted, some, like audio pickups, electromagnetic scanners, and others, make good to excellent proxies for human senses.
(Progress 0/120: 20 resources per die)

We have nine new projects in Services. NINE. That makes choosing where to put our Services dice realy damn difficult. Anyways: This is one of two new medical techs, and due to the impending Labor shortage, that bumps its priority up quite a bit. Our previous first generation vision tech was, uh, a very early version that not many people elected to use, but even that still gave +1 Labor. Even aside that, this will help us treat all the people who get laser blindness and advance that area of medical tech. I hope no one gets too squicked about surgically implanting alien-derived sensors into people's skulls...

[ ] Civil Prosthetics Development (Tech) (New)
Designing a next generation of prosthetic limbs and organs is a substantial challenge, with inputs from a large number of sources, GDI's homegrown attempts at providing technological alternatives and support for human bodily functions are pushed to greater prominence to obscure and downplay the influence of Visitor, Nod, and especially CABAL technology to prevent public backlash.
(Progress 0/120: 20 resources per die)

I'd rank this as a top priority. Our previous Labor shortage was solved in part by us producing lots of prosthetic limbs. Only some of which were able to return people to the Labor pool. As a development project combining Visitor, Nod, and GDI technology, I think we can expect some pretty good results from this. So I predict that this will be the most impactful medical tech in terms of helping blunt our Labor losses.

[ ] Phage Engineering Development (Tech) (New)
While an area GDI has little experience in, phages are an older branch of medicine than antibiotics. The problem has always been in finding strains aimed at the right pathogen, hardy enough and effective enough to counteract whatever is sickening the patient. While custom building bacterio- and virophages to the patient is not a requirement, reverse engineering the Brotherhood's phage treatments will greatly enhance the Initiative's ability to treat many infectious diseases.
(Progress 0/40: 15 resources per die)

In general, medical technology is always a high priority for us. But between the other medical techs and how crowded Services is right now, I think this ends up being a relatively low priority for us. We still really want this, but unfortunately I expect it'll end up on the backburner for a while.

[ ] Biowarfare Countermeasures Development (Tech) (New)
While the Brotherhood of Nod has typically avoided human targeting bioweapons (on the microscale at least) there has always been the fear of not only some form of superplague, but also various attack vectors against many of the pieces of biotech that GDI relies on, especially in fields like myomers and fuels. Improving preparations to defend against this will take effort, and likely some revisions to the product to include additional hardening.
(Progress 0/40: 15 resources per die)

This is medical tech... but I don't expect it to give us +Health. What it will do is help protect us against one of Nod's strategic MAD weapon vectors. Which, well, I personally dont expect Karachi to trigger a biological attack, but on the other hand it's be better to be safe than sorry. I can't tell you how important you feel this is, but hopefully it won't be too hard to roll out once we get around to doing this.

[ ] Rage Engine Development (Tech) (New)
The Brotherhood of Nod has used, on a limited scale, so-called Rage Generators, subliminal messaging systems that inflict feelings of paranoia, hatred, and fear, able to turn even elite GDI units against each other. While the process is less than useful for GDI in combat applications, various forms of emotional control system could be very useful in treatment of PTSD and other psychological traumas.
(Progress 0/80: 25 resources per die)

I reckon this is a "low" priority medical tech similar to Phage Engineering, though this is for psychological treatments rather than infectious diseases. And good PTSD treatment is something GDI desperately needs.

[ ] Wet AI Development (Tech) (New) (MS)
While Wet AI, or Biological AI, is certainly not a new proposal, developing intelligent life is far from a comfortable idea for many in the Initiative. However, GDI does need means of providing for a graying population, and even if it shall fall, perhaps these beings may be a worthy successor.
(Progress 0/240: 30 resources per die)

On the one hand, this could help us with out Labor shortage, and we can create new, squishier AI friends! On the other hand... goodness this is problematic at best. It's also expensive, and as an entirely new field, probably going to remain expensive too. I think we're going to do this eventually, even if just for the science alone, but not anytime soon. Edit: As @Nottheunmaker points out, we have a lot of medical tech that will help with this, we we'll want to work on that stuff first.

[ ] Stasis Box Development (Tech) (New) (MS)
While there are many means of preserving things, most require keeping the thing in a particular state, usually either very dry, or very frozen. Adapting the Visitor stasis devices offers significant potential benefits in a number of fields, including food storage, medicine, and high energy industrial applications.
(Progress 0/120: 30 resources per die)

This looks like a really useful technology: Boxes that stop or slow time inside them will be fantasitc for storing stuff no matter what that stuff is. This could have a lot of useful effects nearly everywhere. It's also going to cost STUs, but we're not too low on those. Yet. We'll see. Personally I'd want to work on our medical techs first, and Services is rather crowded right now, but we shouldn't sit on this for too long given how universaly useful it looks to be.

[ ] Projected Hardlight Development (Tech) (New)
While the Initiative has a number of hardlight systems, so far it has mostly been a curiosity rather than a practicality. However, refinements and improvements in shield technology, and refinements in the means of projecting combine to produce a set of hardlight interfaces that can be scaled out to a relatively small room, allowing touch without touch, giving both tactile feedback, and the safety of gesture based controls, among other things.
(Progress 0/60: 15 resources per die)

This is Holodeck technology, like from Star Trek. I am really excited for us to do this. It's also, unfortunately, competing with everything else in Services, so I don't expect us tomget around to this anytime soon. Which is sad. (Sidenote, this does have applications in making better interfaces for military uses. We might want this before/during designing new military Platforms.)

[ ] Drone Control Hub Development (New) (Tech)
The Visitors were, from what GDI can tell, an incredibly automated force, with only a bare handful of actual intelligences running the entire affair. Much of the work was offloaded onto various forms of EVA equivalents, managing the networks of drone systems across their invasion force. While replicating that level of automation with current computing technology is impossible, many advances in the practice and theory of large drone swarms can still be made while isolinear and other computer technologies mature.
(Progress 0/180: 20 resources per die)

This feels like a Military tech snuck its way into Services. It seems more useful for improving our military drones than anything else. It.. might help us with Labor? Maybe giving drone swarms that EVAs and AI can control better? I'm not sure on this one, but my gut feeling is that this just isn't a priority for us anytime soon.

Gonna call it quits here for now. There are 10 new Military projects and this post is big enough as is. I do want to pick this up again later. (And I see I've been a bit ninja'd by @Nottheunmaker, so I better hurry up and post.)

Shadows · Jul 11, 2023

doruma1920 said:
@Shadows , I was looking over the Plans in the tally and I noticed what appear to be a few accounting issues:

The Tiberium section should add up to 190 R. The Orbital section should add up to 200 R (The Species Restoration Bay should be 80 R for Erewhon + 3 normal dice). The Military section should add up to 190 R (the Particle Shield Development should be 50 R). Those being the case, the budget for your plan should add up to 1205 R not 1240 (95+150+110+40+190+200+170+190+60).

The latter this turn, if any of the top 7 plans win. The former will probably have to wait until at least after Boston, just for the Capital Goods.

Thanks. This is what happens when you make changes after posting.

mmgaballah · Jul 11, 2023

Derpmind said:
Absolutely we need to do this. Anything that might improve Vein Mines, as one of our major income sources, is highly needed yesterday. Even if it only has a small effect, we're going to be doing many Vein Mines in the future. This also seems likely to have other effects elsewhere, hopefully stuff that will help further fortify Karaz Himalaya. (AKA BZ-18.)

Its implications could extend to space improving the rate of development and income of our moon mines in addition to construction to their use in construction digging out a foundation or building underground will become a lot easier

Derpmind said:
It's important that we work on this immediately. Our Vein Mines keep running into pockets of liquid tib, and we desperately need a way to safely deal with liquid tib so we can avoid more massive explosions with planet-wide effects. And we can't stop doing Vein Mines because underground tib and underground liquid tib is running rampant.

this isn't about dealing with the dangers of liquid tib , its about ways to process and refine the liquid tib we have into stuff that is useful and safe , its stuff like rocket fuel , possible some polymers and STU chemicals/solutions , completely reliable and actually safe liquid tib energy stuff like that , it doesn't do anything for liquid tib in the wild other than turn it from a hazard into a resource which is still an improvement

Derpmind said:
(Sidenote, this does have applications in making better interfaces for military uses. We might want this before/during designing new military Platforms.)

defiantly , one of the complaints of pilots when we rolled out the wingman drones is that they struggled to pilot their craft and decently control them all

Derpmind said:
This feels like a Military tech snuck its way into Services. It seems more useful for improving our military drones than anything else. It.. might help us with Labor? Maybe giving drone swarms that EVAs and AI can control better? I'm not sure on this one, but my gut feeling is that this just isn't a priority for us anytime soon.

no this is exactly were it should be , this isn't just about controlling drones , its the same automation tech the Visitors used , this makes existing GDI automation tech look like early 19th century assembly lines levels of advanced , this is pretty much automation from a software perspective solved forever , like for example you can make a bunch of construction drones , give them the needed building material and then use this tech to give them orders to build a thing and they would just do it without any additional labor requirement , this would let us spend extra cap goods to reduce labor requirements to below our level of abstraction

Hellteddy · Jul 11, 2023

[X] Plan New Age of Refining
[X] Plan Attempting to Brace for Impact
[X] Plan: Physiotherapy
[X] Plan Name Here

Bharatavarsha · Jul 11, 2023

[X] Plan Chippin' In

Hunter531 · Jul 11, 2023

Karugus said:
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.

Along with seemingly everyone else in the thread, I've grown tired of the Inferno Gel debate. Fingers crossed the next update has some more IC information on the subject. I find that tends to help cool down these sorts of debates. However, I figure this point is sufficiently worth discussing on its own merits that I am willing to take up this particular discussion.

Gana aren't simple foot soldiers, they're far more specialized than that. They're shock troops, designed to get up close to GDI positions and wreak havoc. That's not really something you need sapience for. Indeed adding sapience could hurt by allowing the Gana to overthink when they only have to act on instinct. Just plain old animal-level sentience does that job pretty well. It also explains why a slave circuit would be used.

I'm not saying that sapience would be worthless though. It's just making the Gana only as intelligent as a particularly smart animal gives you 90% of the benefits sapience does, at a fraction of the headaches. Most of the remaining 10% can be mitigated by having trained handlers accompany units of Gana (I suspect Haddi to be one of those handlers, but more on that later). Trained handlers would allow units of Gana to act more independently, and adapt to terrain and circumstances.

That just leaves tool usage, which actually isn't all that useful for Gana. They don't need tools, they are the tools. Why pick up a weapon when you have a far better one integrated into your body? Why open a door when you can just break it down as easily as a human would open it? You get the idea.

Karugus said:
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.

Unfortunately, the fate you describe is as common as muck in Nod. If doing so is an atrocity then just about every mother who carried a child to term in Nod territory is guilty. I suspect that any sapient Gana would have roughly the same amount of latitude to independently grow and express their own personhood as naturally born Noddists. Thankfully, it seems that said indoctrination is far from perfect, as demonstrated by the number of defectors we have.

Any sapient Gana might even be better off than most Nod children in that regard. The twins would be the ones who decide the level of indoctrination, and they are pretty moderate as far as Nod Warlords go. Plus, the Bannerjees are smart enough to know that brainwashing a sapient Gana too much kinda defeats the purpose of making them able to think for themselves in the first place.

Karugus said:
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.

This is really cynical, but there's actually a pretty solid reason for Warlords to avoid mistreating their sapient Gana. Normal Gana are pricy, and I imagine sapient ones are far more expensive. Why abuse your power of life and death over Gana you have to pay for when you can do the same thing to your human citizens free of charge?

Karugus said:
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.

The debate over whether or not to use Inferno Gel has had a fair few negative consequences, but I don't think this is one of them. From what I can recall, we've been avoiding talking about that since well before this turn began.

The reason why we tend not to acknowledge the moral compromises inherent in working with Nod is because they're already set in stone. We made our bed when we started accepting Nod defectors and doing diplomacy with more moderate factions. Now we have to lie in it. Not much point to talking about the moral issues of working with Nod when we don't have any real alternatives.

TL;DR: Why bother making the slaves sapient when you can use sapient overseers instead? How would a brainwashed sapient Gana be all that worse off compared to a common citizen of Nod? Why talk about the moral issues of working with Nod when there's not a damn thing we can do about it?

MightbeaMimic · Jul 11, 2023

Derpmind said:
This feels like a Military tech snuck its way into Services. It seems more useful for improving our military drones than anything else. It.. might help us with Labor? Maybe giving drone swarms that EVAs and AI can control better? I'm not sure on this one, but my gut feeling is that this just isn't a priority for us anytime soon.

I largely agree with things up to this point but you've gotten this one completely wrong. GDI makes heavy use of drones in construction and mining (just off the top of my head, there are definitely a load of other things). This means instead of a guy piloting a drone you can shift to a guy operating 10+ (number is a guess) drones simultaneously, drastically reducing the amount of people needed in those jobs. IMO this is a top Services priority after the prosthetics and I think it needs to be at least started within the next 2 turns

MSH · Jul 11, 2023

I just want to throw all of this shit on the next tank line.

Hovering, eight plasma cannons in various directions, cloud of drones around it, particle shielded, hardlight controls, articulated arms hanging underneath it, stasis chamber to protect the crew during catastrophic failure. All powered by microfusion cell array. Gravity engine?

Is this even a tank?

Manowl · Jul 11, 2023

MSH said:
I just want to throw all of this shit on the next tank line.

Hovering, eight plasma cannons in various directions, cloud of drones around it, particle shielded, hardlight controls, articulated arms hanging underneath it, stasis chamber to protect the crew during catastrophic failure. All powered by microfusion cell array. Gravity engine?

Is this even a tank?

More than one Canon on a vehicle is questionable unless it's specifically designed around it having more than one, 8 on one is impractical as hell.

Lightwhispers · Jul 11, 2023

MSH said:
I just want to throw all of this shit on the next tank line.

Hovering, eight plasma cannons in various directions, cloud of drones around it, particle shielded, hardlight controls, articulated arms hanging underneath it, stasis chamber to protect the crew during catastrophic failure. All powered by microfusion cell array. Gravity engine?

Is this even a tank?

That sounds like you're designing an air cruiser, as a counterpart to the Varyag.

Manowl said:
More than one Canon on a vehicle is questionable unless it's specifically designed around it having more than one, 8 on one is impractical as hell.

Ah, but having more than one cannon on GDI vehicles is canon.

More seriously, as I mentioned above, having multiple turrets on something the size of a warship is pretty standard.

MSH · Jul 11, 2023

Unfortunately (?), anti-grav pretty much ruins any bounds of practicality when it comes to tanks. We can just...make them as large as we want.

As large as...we...GDI...want...

mmgaballah · Jul 11, 2023

MSH said:
As large as...we...GDI...want...

we the GDI already have building sized tanks , now they will being bigger building sized tanks

Derpmind · Jul 11, 2023

MSH said:
Unfortunately (?), anti-grav pretty much ruins any bounds of practicality when it comes to tanks. We can just...make them as large as we want.

As large as...we...GDI...want...

*whispers* flying marvs

MSH · Jul 11, 2023

I was thinking that the square-cube law might still stop us if the anti-grav provides only effective lift, but then I remembered we have all these STU materials.

Perhaps it's a good thing Seo is so interested in conventional mad science. Most GDI mad scientists would demand the Ultimate MARV be first on the docket.

Sa'kage · Jul 11, 2023

GDi Scientist: This is why you shouldn't take NOD science as the normal human science. Unlike us at GDI whom is much more sensible and practical.

Alien Scientist staring at the giant flying MARV tank with 15 different guns on every side: I see...very....practical, yes.

Hazard · Jul 11, 2023

Derpmind said:
It's important that we work on this immediately. Our Vein Mines keep running into pockets of liquid tib, and we desperately need a way to safely deal with liquid tib so we can avoid more massive explosions with planet-wide effects. And we can't stop doing Vein Mines because underground tib and underground liquid tib is running rampant.

It also sounds like we could gain resources from refining liquid tib... I can't say that really matters though, and GDI focuses on safety over profit anyways.

Sadly, this is a 'process liquid tiberium' technology, not a 'safely harvest, store and transport liquid tiberium' technology.

Still incredibly useful because it means we can do things with liquid tiberium that isn't pouring it out over a patch of tiberium and hope it crystallizes without exploding, but not as good being able to tap, drain and process liquid tiberium in a safe manner in a single go.

Manowl said:
More than one Canon on a vehicle is questionable unless it's specifically designed around it having more than one, 8 on one is impractical as hell.

Tell that to the navy, who believe that 'moar dakka' is a valid answer to a large number of problems.

KnightDisciple · Jul 11, 2023

Sa'kage said:
GDi Scientist: This is why you shouldn't take NOD science as the normal human science. Unlike us at GDI whom is much more sensible and practical.

Alien Scientist staring at the giant flying MARV tank with 15 different guns on every side: I see...very....practical, yes.

But you see it's shaped like a brick and not a human, so it's clearly practical!

Simon_Jester · Jul 11, 2023

mmgaballah said:
no this is exactly were it should be , this isn't just about controlling drones , its the same automation tech the Visitors used , this makes existing GDI automation tech look like early 19th century assembly lines levels of advanced , this is pretty much automation from a software perspective solved forever , like for example you can make a bunch of construction drones , give them the needed building material and then use this tech to give them orders to build a thing and they would just do it without any additional labor requirement , this would let us spend extra cap goods to reduce labor requirements to below our level of abstraction

I wish you wouldn't just casually assert stuff like this. Based on past precedent you're probably infodumping stuff you saw in Discord, but you don't source any of that stuff.

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