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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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Hopefully with the Heist out of the way (if all goes to plan) and finishing up the Asteroid Belt we can focus on more science stuff.

For instance, starting up the Lunar Imaging Seismic Array project, building the Jupiter observation array, and scanning Jupiter's moons. I'm also interested in Mercury and want to explore the surface for mineral deposits and experiments with the sun.
 
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trooperist said:
Hopefully with the Heist of the way (if all goes to plan) and finishing up the Asteroid Belt we can focus on more science stuff.

For instance, starting up the Lunar Imaging Seismic Array project, building the Jupiter observation array, and scanning Jupiter's moons. I'm also interested in Mercury and want to explore the surface for mineral deposits and experiments with the sun.
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True, although I think that after the Moon Mars is highest priority - not only because it is comparatively easy to reach even with fusion drives, but especially because I want to get more Eezo and to see if we can find the Prothean facilities.
 
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tenchifew said:
True, although I think that after the Moon Mars is highest priority - not only because it is comparatively easy to reach even with fusion drives, but especially because I want to get more Eezo and to see if we can find the Prothean facilities.
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Actually, that makes me think of something.

Will finding the prothean facilities make establishing a mars base easier?

Think about it, the buildings are right there. Sure, perhaps the first science base will be entirely outside, to give time for the Prothean facilities to be thouroughly analyzed for anything dangerous, but then afterwards... why not patch them up and use them as free real estate?
 
PurposefulZephyr said:
Honestly, it's still astonishing there's no NOD in space. That, unlike Tiberium, they're contained to Earth.
That makes everything we do in space something of a hidden trump card. When we research this new Tiberium in space, NOD won't have a clue, aside from whatever infiltration efforts they manage.

Honestly, won't be surprised if the SPACE PIRATES we got now won't allow Starbound party to steal some military-minded voters. A vote for blindsiding our enemies, for hitting them with they-won't-know-what.
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Historically, one of the things NOD has never really challenged is GDI's control of the orbitals - the closest they have come is nuking the original Philadelphia station, and that was a Big Thing for them. (Well, until The Game That Never Happened. :p )
Add to that stealth being hard in space, and... well, they probably could get some craft out of Earth Atmosphere, but what would they do with that? Start a moonbase? We already have one. Set up a space station at a Lagrange point? Possible, but that runs the risk of being detected by our ever-increasing space exploration presence. It would take a large effort, for a very very long-term payoff.
SegaCD said:
When did we get eezo anyways?
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We found a tiny amount on Mars, a bit ago, which we recently did a project on to analyze.
 
Lightwhispers said:
Historically, one of the things NOD has never really challenged is GDI's control of the orbitals - the closest they have come is nuking the original Philadelphia station, and that was a Big Thing for them. (Well, until The Game That Never Happened. :p )
Add to that stealth being hard in space, and... well, they probably could get some craft out of Earth Atmosphere, but what would they do with that? Start a moonbase? We already have one. Set up a space station at a Lagrange point? Possible, but that runs the risk of being detected by our ever-increasing space exploration presence. It would take a large effort, for a very very long-term payoff.
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NOD has the same problem most countries have with space exploration - it is Expensive with capital "E" and any payoffs being pretty long term.
Add to it that GDI is a global government able to pull all of its income into one pool, while NOD is pretty splintered - and any warlord willing to go to space would have to invest possibly years of income into something that could easily be destroyed if unlucky.

This said, if NOD gets a space program, say if Kane insists, it will be with near certainty a stealthed vehicle, and I would WANT, WANT, WANT to get this, because it would change the paradigm for the follow up quest extremely - stealthed human ships from the beginning... yes, please.
 
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tenchifew said:
This said, if NOD gets a space program, it will be with near certainty a stealthed vehicle, and I would WANT, WANT, WANT to get this, because it would change the paradigm for the follow up quest extremely - stealthed humans ships from the beginning... yes, please.
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We would have had some practical research on that Stealth Tech, if it wasn't abandoned into storage only for some enterprising Nod Commander i.e. LEGION to come raid the place. The same place guarded by the Steel Talons.

Yes, I'm still talking about that one mission from Kane's Wrath where you raid a lab to retrieve Nod's Stealth Tech.
 
staplesdex2 said:
We would have had some practical research on that Stealth Tech, if it wasn't abandoned into storage only for some enterprising Nod Commander i.e. LEGION to come raid the place. The same place guarded by the Steel Talons.

Yes, I'm still talking about that one mission from Kane's Wrath where you raid a lab to retrieve Nod's Stealth Tech.
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Oh yes, I was basically thinking:
Which GDI commander has won this particular Darwin award?!
 
BOTcommander said:
Tiberium Monitoring Array
The standout mission last quarter was the delivery of the Tiberium Monitoring system. The six high power radar satellites have been put on low orbits and continuously send out a narrow radar beam that penetrates the clouds. When they hit Tiberium, the refraction is noticeably different and produces a sharp spike in reflected radio waves. Over the course of hundreds of orbits, the full extent of the field and its growth has been measured. More long term observations will lead to better figures in the future, but early estimates place the point where the field covers the entire surface of Venus somewhere in between 100 and 200 years.
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Can we back-plot to the presumed time at which the tiberium field originated? Makes a big difference whether it gots its start in 1995, some time in the 2010s, some time around 2030, or some time around 2047-50.

PurposefulZephyr said:
Honestly, it's still astonishing there's no NOD in space. That, unlike Tiberium, they're contained to Earth.
That makes everything we do in space something of a hidden trump card. When we research this new Tiberium in space, NOD won't have a clue, aside from whatever infiltration efforts they manage.
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To be fair, it's entirely possible that anything we can learn by scanning Venusian tiberium, Kane can just calculate using information derived from the Tacitus, or by firing up some scanner systems in Threshold 19.
 
tenchifew said:
NOD has the same problem most countries have with space exploration - it is Expensive with capital "E" and any payoffs being pretty long term.
Add to it that GDI is a global government able to pull all of its income into one pool, while NOD is pretty splintered - and any warlord willing to go to space would have to invest possibly years of income into something that could easily be destroyed if unlucky.

This said, if NOD gets a space program, say if Kane insists, it will be with near certainty a stealthed vehicle, and I would WANT, WANT, WANT to get this, because it would change the paradigm for the follow up quest extremely - stealthed human ships from the beginning... yes, please.
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We have G-drives, which already dramatically upends the Mass Effect paradigm.

Most ships there use reaction drives with mass-lightening and inertia control, which means they're still loosely bound by the rocket equation. It's not until the Normandy that anyone gets a reactionless drive of any description OTL, and that drive is limited to stealth applications.

Whereas ITTL we'll have had the G-drive for a little less than a century before probable First Contact with the Citadel. That alone makes for massive advantages in space, including but not limited to:
*No propellant mass means no flimsy tanks taking up most of your mass and volume--the mass ratio of a G-drive ship is much closer to wet-navy or aircraft proportions than the 3-20 ratio typical of a rocket.
*With compact fusion for power generation and delta-V no longer a concern, the main limit on voyages is crew endurance and supply, just like nuclear ships IRL. That can mean a space force that can sustain a higher operational tempo, and a..merchant espatier? That can move goods faster and for cheaper.
*No exhaust plume means every warship is a little stealthier than the competition even if it's not designed for stealth and doesn't practice emissions control. (Granted that, given the Asteroid Belt disruption caused by the Scrin invasion force, G-drive vessels might be more visible to gravimetric sensors than a fusion rocket. At least without special work.)
 
BOTcommander said:
Need more data, current estimations say the field likely originated somewhere between 1970 and 2030.
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Hm. That strongly suggests that:

1) It did not originate from the Temple Prime explosion, in which case the ghost of Director Boyle has one less thing to answer for. Conceivably if multiple pieces of tiberium fell over a clustered region of the Venusian surface, all of them could have created patches that combined into a single mega-patch that would have grown together to look like a single mega-patch with an earlier point of origin. But I suspect that if this were the case, our scientists would already have figured it out, or soon will figure it out.

2) It did not originate with the Scrin- though see above.

It also suggests three possible origins:

3a) Seeded into Venus as part of the same initial seeding onto Earth.

3b) Seeded deliberately by Nod at some point prior to or during the Second Tiberium War.

3c) Seeded in the early 'wildcat' days of tiberium exploitation by some non-Nod national goverment or galaxy-brained billionaire with access to commercial space launch, because "just drop some tiberium on Venus and see if we can turn Venus into a giant mine at some point in the indefinite future" sounds like exactly the kind of shit that this timeline's version of Elon Musk would try.
 
tenchifew said:
...YAY!!!
This is arguably the best tech we could get.

What was rolled?
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Puterace put in enough work that Ithillid let them choose what reward they got, but the portal tech is the 100 roll for the Scrin tech table.

Puterace — Today at 00:48
I asked a few questions about some of the other things I was eyeing before deciding.
Puterace — Today at 00:49
Some of those other techs are quite amazing.
Puterace — Today at 00:50
But I've chosen portal because I think it has in-quest tactical and strategic implications. As well as aiding in Mars/Lunar expansion civilian usage, and eventually into post-quest implications.
ithillid — Today at 00:52
I would have gone with tib refining personally, because it nukes STUs as an indicator.
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tenchifew said:
...YAY!!!
This is arguably the best tech we could get.

What was rolled?
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Puterace basically spent several days (maybe weeks?) working behind the scenes to automate a ton of the backend part of the quest for Ithilid, to the point where Ithilid was so impressed he said that Puterace could pick any one Scrin tech to be given, no roll required, as the reward.
 
Under normal circumstances, it takes hours to go through and make sure everything is accurate. With Puterace's system, I can do that and adjust the economic indicators in a matter of minutes.
 
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