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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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Simon_Jester said:
Well, if we throw 6-8 dice at shipyards and wingman drone factories, hopefully we'll at least get somewhere.
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Maybe, we want to roll out a min of 1 carrier shipyard and 1 wingman drone factory next turn, after that it all depends on how much energy and cap goods and dice that takes as well as if any of the other consumables are needed. Plus we still need the ECCM and Stealth Disruptor to work against NODs greatest strength though those are a die each.
 
So, as the semi-co-QM and writer-helper for Ithillid, I want to rely a slight bad news related to how the update will go. But first, a segue to the upcoming Fourth Tiberium War, or as agreed upon, "The Regency War". And yes, the Initiative and Brotherhood agreed to the naming theme.

The reason however, is rooted in geopolitical reality and from another perspective, a white lie. The Regency War is the first Tiberium War to occur without Kane's intervention, a continuation to the idea that the Major Warlords are beating the GDI to establish pecking order on who among them will be the 'right hand Warlord' – outside of the Inner Circle, of course.

In other words, this is not a war to the knife's edge proverbially fought inside a telephone booth where one person dies – the Scrin in this analogy – and the other two combatants limped bloody and nearly dead towards the hospital. This is something close to a formal war, and with it comes a set of assumptions and agreements. On the Brotherhood's end, individual Warlords might decide that the fighting is too much and call for a separate 'peace'. Such a 'peace' would be ruinous but ultimately survivable, assuming said Warlord could tap out before things are tipped way unfavourably for them. On the Initiative's side? Well, even without this current ~50% success rate on Steel Vanguard, they're the one fighting the global war. The losses could become very unsustainable fast if the tempo of battle falls wrongly and one front losing badly means drawing reserves that could be used to slam a breakthrough elsewhere and so forth. So if the Warlords sue for 'peace', the faster we can go back to our regularly scheduled PlanQuest shenanigans.

"But wait, what does this have to do with that bad news?" Y'all may ask. That has something to do with the mechanic of the Regency War. See, shortly after Ithillid set the date of the war, he rolled for the timeline when the Warlords would commit to their offensive. And when I say 'commit', I meant "Activate their individual Masterstrokes". Each Warlord has one and though some are more esoteric and/or flashy than others, they have significant impact when deployed, failure or no.

And on 2060 Q1, four of them are scheduled off. Which lead to the slight problem that writing four Masterstroke deployments, successful or not, takes a bit of time and we might have to post some of them separately due to the eventual length of each Masterstrokes.
 
Vocalend said:
So, as the semi-co-QM and writer-helper for Ithillid, I want to rely a slight bad news related to how the update will go.
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Vocalend said:
And on 2060 Q1, four of them are scheduled off. Which lead to the slight problem that writing four Masterstroke deployments, successful or not, takes a bit of time and we might have to post some of them separately due to the eventual length of each Masterstrokes.
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"What's the bad news?"
"We have to write more."
"I fail to see the problem here."
 
Well, if four masterstrokes just cooked off now, I think that could be a good thing as long as none of them are too successful. If we defeat them, preferably soundly, focusing on them more than the rest of the warlords means that we could peace those warlords out early in the war and focus on other areas. A Divide and Conquer tactic.
 
ninjakirito6 said:
Well, if four masterstrokes just cooked off now, I think that could be a good thing as long as none of them are too successful. If we defeat them, preferably soundly, focusing on them more than the rest of the warlords means that we could peace those warlords out early in the war and focus on other areas. A Divide and Conquer tactic.
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I think you mean a Command and Conquer tactic.
 
Sailor_Skarro said:
but now I'm wondering who the other three were.
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I feel like Gideon might try to push Chicago again, which will likely permanently lock the project if he succeeds. The Indian Warlord also may have revealed their existence. Few ideas for the others, but perhaps Mehretu would go for the Johannesburg myomer macrospinner. We have a redundancy for that, though.
 
Is the Warlord masterstroke is different from Kane's masterstroke?
As a reminder for some, Kane's masterstroke allows him to take the highest dice NOD rolls for the event and use it for his own plan.

I'm guessing since they've been preparing for so long a Warlord's masterstroke gives an action a nice positive modifier but it can only be used once for the entire war.
 
I had a terrible realization. The Indian Warlord's masterstroke, if they engage us now, could be a hallucinogen/other chemical attack on the Himalayan Blue Zone. Would fit the bioscience theme, cause many casualties, and make great propaganda fuel against us.
 
TheFourthman said:
Jeez. We're getting hit by 4 at once? Which dice god did we anger.
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None~ If the dice gods really were angered, y'all wouldn't have won the 1 in 100 shot of the intel coup and this turn, would have done Karachi without any foreknowledge of anything amiss until four Masterstrokes slammed into the Initiative.

Imagine that scenario instead, if things seemed bleak at the moment.
trooperist said:
Is the Warlord masterstroke is different from Kane's masterstroke?
As a reminder for some, Kane's masterstroke allows him to take the highest dice NOD rolls for the event and use it for his own plan.

I'm guessing since they've been preparing for so long a Warlord's masterstroke gives an action a nice positive modifier but it can only be used once for the entire war.
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It's different in that each Warlords have a, for lack of better word, 'Special Attack' based on their speciality. Being regional powers each, they are limited to what they have and what their fellow Warlords might contribute – and in the case of the Indian Warlords, likely a copious amount of Gana bioweapon forms as 'donations' – but it is something that they're good at, in some ways. In the case of Stahl, since the Discord has been somewhat briefed, his Masterstroke is 'merely' to be very competent in executing a mobile defense warfare against the GDI offensive to a point roughly comparable to the Legendary Insurgent (Brotherhood PC in TW3). Not necessarily flashy but then, it's Stahl. The Imperial Guardsmen inspired faction doesn't need to~
 
Vocalend said:
– and in the case of the Indian Warlords, likely a copious amount of Gana bioweapon forms as 'donations' – but it is something that they're good at, in some ways.
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That's very interesting, is the us of the word Warlords intentional in this case or a mistake because I'd thought there was a Indian Warlord but if it's a case of multiple Warlords it explains why we haven't seen to much of them outside their exports, because they've been busy fighting each other.

Of course there's an equally good chance we already knew this and I missed this completely.
 
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Vocalend said:
None~ If the dice gods really were angered, y'all wouldn't have won the 1 in 100 shot of the intel coup and this turn, would have done Karachi without any foreknowledge of anything amiss until four Masterstrokes slammed into the Initiative.

Imagine that scenario instead, if things seemed bleak at the moment.

It's different in that each Warlords have a, for lack of better word, 'Special Attack' based on their speciality. Being regional powers each, they are limited to what they have and what their fellow Warlords might contribute – and in the case of the Indian Warlords, likely a copious amount of Gana bioweapon forms as 'donations' – but it is something that they're good at, in some ways. In the case of Stahl, since the Discord has been somewhat briefed, his Masterstroke is 'merely' to be very competent in executing a mobile defense warfare against the GDI offensive to a point roughly comparable to the Legendary Insurgent (Brotherhood PC in TW3). Not necessarily flashy but then, it's Stahl. The Imperial Guardsmen inspired faction doesn't need to~
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CREED STAHL!

So, it's worthwhile looking at the rolls.
Assume, for sake of argument, that they're divided in campaigns of 4 rolloffs each.
In that case, the differences before modifiers are applied are:
Campaign 1: Krukov: GDI win by 9, NOD win by 42, NOD win by 42 again, then GDI win by 69 (vs a Nat 1)
Campaign 2: GDI loses by 26, 69, 47, and then wins by 4
Campaign 3: GDI wins by 38, 59, 18, 1
Campaign 4: GDI wins by 36, 38, then loses by 41, 32
Campaign 5: GDI loses by 64, 31, 74, then wins by 22

GDI likely takes a fair bit of damage from Krukov, but ultimately mauls his force. Campaigns 2 and 5 likely go poorly for GDI, with campaign 4 being swingy, and 3 being the only one that's a clear win. Admittedly, depending on the modifiers, we almost certainly did better than these numbers look, but it's still kinda ouchy. However, this is us on the offensive, and we do have the reserves to absorb some losses, so we're not losing.

(Assuming my premise is correct about the divisions of dice.)
 
Jexx said:
I'd like it to be so, but it just doesn't feel like Krukov-esque Masterstroke.

Co-QMs actually elaborated on discord; Two confirmed 'strokes are Stahl and Mehretu.
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We got IC confirmation that the Varyag things were Krukov's Masterstroke, and we got OOC confirmation that Krukov was one of the nat 1s and he was deploying his Varyags there. We absolutely wrecked Krukov's Masterstroke there.
 
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