Remove ads

Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

Reader mode
Though we should definitely be braced to change our actual plans, in terms of projects worked on or intended, depending on the outcome of the upcoming battles.
 
Can we convince Parliament to cancel our current 4 year plan?

This is the first full-scale war with NOD since the start of the quest, if that's not enough reason to cancel plan I don't know what is.
 
How about we wait to find out what the actual tactical and strategic situation is before we start making thinking about how much of the current Plan if any we want to renegotiate.
 
Oleg-14191 said:
Can we convince Parliament to cancel our current 4 year plan?

This is the first full-scale war with NOD since the start of the quest, if that's not enough reason to cancel plan I don't know what is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We can but we would take a huge PS hit for doing so as the general consensus in parliament is that we are either going to win without significant damage or win with merely moderate damage. How that will or will not change come the resultspost we have no idea. Dropping plan goals or even entirely voiding our remaining goals is something to only consider should we start losing badly. About the only thing parliament wont cut in that case are the orbital and military goals since one is vital to humanities future and the other is vital to keep GDI alive.

We may wind up seeing the politicians alter some goals though depending on what happens. A massive refugee wave may for instance replace kudzu and arcology goals with vertical farming and apartment blocks. Huge armoured losses may see demands to develop next-gen tanks or a sudden massive casualty increase may see us being ordered to deploy automated medical assistants.
 
Oleg-14191 said:
Can we convince Parliament to cancel our current 4 year plan?

This is the first full-scale war with NOD since the start of the quest, if that's not enough reason to cancel plan I don't know what is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is not necessary, now we can fulfill the plan without additional cubes, even spending everything we can on the offensive. Unless it is worth throwing a dozen dice into orbit at the end of the plan, but that's all.
 
At this point, I can only see it worth considering the dropping of:
1 Wadmalaw Kudzu Plantations phase. Because we should really be focussed on Food and Food Reserves only.
Enterprise Stage 5. Because some wiggle room in Orbital would really help. (Support Satellites.)
Karachi Planned City if this suddenly becomes infeasible. Although that wasn't a government promise, so I'm not sure we can actually negotiate that one away. I presume the military decides if it goes away, and we apologise for not being able to do it.
 
Remove ads
GDI Arsenal Addition List
  • Informational
    • GDI Arsenal Addition List

    Infantry Equipment
    GDI's Zone Trooper and Raider Projects are best understood not as a mainline infantrymen, but rather mobile, aggressive, counterforce/countervalue assets, closer in both theory and practice to the Commandos, rather than the rifle squad. Both are intended to fill two primary roles. Either, they were to get into the back lines and raise havoc (as seen during Operation: Payback) or they were to act as primary strike assets, taking the fight to NOD armored columns, or their walker forces. In neither role were they expected to hold positions on their own. However, with the growth of Tiberium, and ZOCOM's perceived need for a new generation of suits, a more combined arms approach is being brought to the fore. Three new suits have exited testing.

    First is the Zone Captain. Taking the sensor package from a GDI Sniper team and mounting it to a suit of powered armor is functionally simple. A laser designator, personal RADAR system, and an expanded communications suite gives these suits the ability to act as forward observers, directing fire support with lethal precision. While not intended for front line combat, it has been given a standard issue light machine gun with minor modifications, most notably reshaped grip surfaces so that the larger hands of the Zone Captain.

    Second is the Defender. While Zone Armor is inherently complicated and expensive, it can be substantially stripped down. Equipped with a disc grenade launcher and a light machine gun, the Defender aims to be a version that reduces the cost of the equipment to being something that can be widely deployed. Instead of each soldier costing nearly as much as an entire squad, a Defender, with its lack of jetpack, advanced HUD, limited communications systems, and stripped down armor and mobility support systems is aimed to resolve. While still more expensive than standard GDI infantry kit, it is still substantially more comprehensive, and provides full coverage against Tiberium exposure.

    Third and finally is the Maurauder pattern. Aimed to be a "Zone Heavy" the Maurauder is built around delivering a constant stream of rocket propelled grenades. While each grenade is small by RPG standards, they are still more than sufficient for use against both infantry and light vehicles.
    Additionally, revisions have been made to the existing Trooper and Raider models, primarily in the form of improved armor, and modified articulation. While substantial work will have to be delayed until there are sufficient myomer bundles to completely rework the systems, small tweaks should keep the suits as they are relevant for decades to come.

    Ground Vehicles
    The MBT-6 Predator is a veteran tank of the Third Tiberium War where it served with distinction in battlefields ranging from the deserts of Africa to the streets of Washington. That being said, the design has not survived entirely intact. The most immediately noticeable change is that the original 152mm smoothbore barrel has been replaced instead by a high velocity railgun, providing better armour penetration and range. On top of the tank, the Remote Weapons System, inspired by the ones used on Guardian APCs but using the newer 'Raptor' system helps protect the vehicle from infantry rushes and rpg troopers, while the 'Wali' laser point defence system mounted on top protects the vehicle from rockets and missiles. Improved armour was required and then provided to deal with Nod's laser weapons in the form of Ablat plates, attached to the front and sides of the vehicle where they can absorb laser strikes. Finally, and almost unnoticeably, the sensor systems have been entirely replaced in order to deal with Nod stealth technology. All in all, the Predator is a far deadlier beast than it's first iteration but it is still an aging system that will require replacement in the future, rather than further upgrades.

    The MARV as designed is a powerful weapon of war and has proven itself in hundreds of battles. While occasionally defeated such as in the African Red Zone in 2047, each destruction saw the use of overwhelming NOD firepower and repeated attack waves, often using stealth assets to destroy MARV.

    The critical flaw in MARV is its limitation of its Tiberium harvesting and refining methodology. While standard harvesters rake through the topsoil, collecting even relatively small crystals, the fixed harvesting array on a MARV on the other hand cannot sweep the Tiberium instead only collecting the large surface crystals. While admittedly able to collect a substantial amount of resources and able to cut through Tiberium fields, it is also far less than could be collected, and the remaining Tiberium crystals grow back faster than hoped meaning the area must undergo additional sweeps.

    The "super" version of the MARV is intended to solve both of these problems. An additional trailer section behind the main gun turret adds much more space for weaponry and more storage for Tiberium while retaining the (admittedly limited) mobility that makes the MARV functional. This adds two sections for additional gun mounts and more tiberium storage. For the latter problem, the "mouth" of the MARV has been completely redesigned. A pair of sweeper arms, effectively upscaled from the standard Harvester, and able to sweep through the topsoil to bring smaller crystals up and into the MARV, have been installed and are intended to draw Tiberium into its mouth for processing. This will unfortunately render MARV immobile while the sweeper arms are deployed, but we believe this is to be a good trade off.

    Rather than refitting existing MARV plants, the current goal is to build a series of new construction yards, a concession to the fact that the Super MARV is even more excessively armed, armored, and expensive than the "Standard" design.

    As of 2060, GDI's artillery park consists mainly of four guns:

    The 203mm rifle remains secure in its role as GDI's heavy artillery. A former 8-inch naval gun mounted on the Juggernaut walker and more recently the Huntsman SPG, the 203mm remains the heaviest and longest-ranged tube in the arsenal.

    The 152mm smoothbore remains the most common regimental-scale artillery piece in use. A former tank gun obsoleted by tank-portable railguns and retrofitted onto a towed gun carriage as a war-expedient measure, the 152mm smoothbore is heavy, inaccurate, and slow-firing. Furthermore, the gun fires at a very high pressure and a high muzzle velocity--while this nominally extends the maximum range, the gun remains too inaccurate for use at those ranges and the thicker shell walls necessitated limit the effective payload of those shells that do arrive. Hwever, despite its many flaws, the 152mm smoothbore has formed the basis for the revival of massed artillery, particularly mechanized regimental artillery in the form of the Overseer SPG.

    While obsoleted by the 155mm rifle and in the process of being replaced, as of 2060 many smoothbores remain in use among second-line units and rear positions who have yet to receive the new guns.

    The new 155mm rifle, on the other hand, is purpose-built as an artillery gun. More accurate, lighter, faster-firing, and with more effective shells, the rifle is in every way an improvement over the 152mm smoothbore, with the latter being replaced wherever the rifle becomes available. As of 2059 the smoothbore was expected to be fully replaced by 2066--it remains to be seen if the Regency War will delay or accelerate that process.

    Lastly, the humble 120mm mortar soldiers on mostly unchanged as the battalion organic fire-support option.
    Q2 2058 (Development)
    At this time, GDI's artillery park is standardized around three guns. First, a 203mm rifle, originally built for the Mark 2 Juggernaut, and later expanded out in lighter configurations. Second, a 152mm smoothbore, And third, a 120mm mortar. Of these, the first and last are quite acceptable. Somewhat short ranged on the former, and somewhat slow firing on the latter, but perfectly acceptable. The problem comes from the middle of the three.

    The current 152mm artillery gun was an emergency measure to create a stopgap solution for the demand for more artillery. As the MBT-6 Predator was undergoing a force wide upgrade to rail guns, its old 152mm smoothbore high velocity guns were available in great quantities, and would not require substantial retooling at a time when GDI was still deep in reconstruction efforts following the Third Tiberium War. Unfortunately, it has performed poorly, with commanders commonly attempting to leave the 152mm pieces behind and requesting greater allotments of 203mm Juggernaut walking artillery and 120mm mortar equipped Bulldogs. Sadly, the problems for the current iteration of 152mm cannons are chronic. As a smoothbore gun, shells are not spin stabilized, and as the gun was designed for high velocity operation it requires very high pressure to properly function, necessitating a thick, heavy barrel. These are useful traits for a gun firing APFSDS shots, as the shot would not engage with the rifling anyway and sheer velocity was the main method of breaching enemy armour. They are not as useful for an artillery piece that is meant to be accurate at great ranges. The new model is substantially optimized for artillery work. First, the gun has been redesigned to work with lower pressures, allowing the barrel to be made thinner and lighter while losing little in range. Second, as the pressure has been lowered it has become possible to use shells with considerably thinner shell walls, holding more filler for better effect on target. Third, the barrel has been rifled, imparting much greater accuracy at range. While the absolute maximum range has shrunk, the effective range has thus been increased. Fourth, the gun can now operate on both integrated munitions, with shell and propellant in the same cartridge, and with separated shell and propellant charges in case the standard load would be inconvenient.

    Beyond modifications to the 152mm gun, the primary changes have been made to the targeting computer. With GDI increasingly relying on forward observers and massed battery fire, the use of centralized fire direction, despite adding in another step between a call for fire and shells reaching the target, increases accuracy and speed of response. In GDI's next generation force, each company will have a fire direction vehicle, almost certainly an extensively modified Guardian chassis, replacing its crew compartment with computers, sensors, and communications equipment to allow for directed fire against targets across an over fifty kilometer range.

    The total refit costs are going to be incredibly marginal. While refits are definitely required, they will not require more than a series of modifications to existing equipment. This will not immediately remove the existing smoothbore guns from service, but it will relegate them to increasingly marginal roles, and over the course of the next five to seven years, they will be removed completely, as GDI transitions to a more modern artillery park.

    Q4 2058
    The deployment of the new tubes has not gone quite swimmingly. While adding rifling to existing guns is simple, and aside from some of the materials science little different than the standard for producing artillery pieces for two centuries, some minor problems have emerged in the fire direction vehicle project. Specifically, in the shock housing for the optical fire control system. While firmly tertiary, intended to be used for direct fire support and in Ion Storms, it is a critical system. The impacts of moving at speed over terrain can throw it slightly out of alignment, producing negative accuracy impacts. While little more than a handful of minor widgets, and not stopping the widespread deployment, it is something that can be fixed with a final infusion of funding, rather than giving it up as a bad job.

    More broadly, the new artillery pieces have only started arriving at the front in small numbers. Primarily so far they have been allocated to fortress towns, where their mobility is not required, and so the problems with the fire control vehicles is a nonissue. However, so far it has been a bare handful, with Arkhangelsk receiving a first shipment of twenty four guns on the 20th of December, and other fortress towns in the region getting smaller complements in the same week. Similar situations are occurring around the world as guns are parceled out in small packets. However, over the course of the next three to nine months, GDI fully expects to have significantly reduced the role of the old smoothbore guns, and replaced them in most priority areas with new rifles.

    Q1 2059
    New versions of the tube artillery systems have begun to enter widespread deployment, with most forward deployed units receiving at least a handful of new guns. However, when looking at ammunition consumption, the numbers are not as good as could be hoped. While the average fire mission has been halved or more, the number of fire missions has drastically increased. The edge in effective range has left the guns firing at longer ranges and effectively in use constantly during operations. On average ammunition consumption has dropped by some ten to fifteen percent, but that is far less than optimistic projections had assumed. While this is likely to continue to drop as more units are equipped, and available fire missions are spread out among more units, it is unlikely to be enough to fundamentally change the shell situation. However, even small reductions are having a noticeable supply impact, with many areas beginning to be able to lay in marginally larger stockpiles of shells that they have not needed to fire, and some units on quieter parts of the front can last for more than a supply convoy between needing more shells, simplifying the overall logistical footprint.

    GDI's modern harvesters were first commissioned in the months after the Second Tiberium War. Mounting sonic systems to help clear Tiberium off of them, they were designed to be lightly armed due to the consensus that the Brotherhood had been effectively defeated and unable to contest harvesting operations. While future designs, such as the circa 2040s Heavy Harvester of the Zone Operations Command built upon this by adding heavier weapons, the core schematics was never displaced, not only in more secure regions of the Yellow Zones, but instead everywhere across Initiative operations. It had the desired durability, economical cost, and all around an easy to use workhorse that makes it accepted. However, the Third Tiberium War put paid to that concept. In many locations, raids and skirmishes around and on harvester operations were– and are– some of the first signs of Brotherhood interest in a region, oftentimes the precursor to general assault operations in a given region.

    The new design is more iterative than revolutionary. Taking ZOCOM's already heavier Harvester schematics, the design work had to add multiple tons from the final weight. Not only to mount the railguns, but also the attached capacitor banks, power systems, and other miscellaneous equipment and maintenance tools. While in some ways this is significantly simpler than the two arm system that ZOCOM favored, in others it is much more expensive and limiting. While it is unlikely to actively replace the vast majority of the designs– for there was nothing inherently wrong with them in the first place– it is likely to supplement the Steel Talon's variant, or otherwise be assigned to the most bitterly embattled Harvesting operations. In long terms, it is hoped that the model could replace the Steel Talon Harvesters wholesale, and for field officers to request greater proportions of the heavily armed harvesting systems.

    In the latter half of the 19th century, the most advanced blasting composition in the world was Dynamite, an emulsion of Nitroglycerin and clay, invented by Alfred Nobel. It was, of course, quickly taken up by militaries, looking for a better means of breaking ships and destroying fortresses. However, it had one critical problem. The deflagration or detonation of existing propellants provided a short, sharp, shock to the system, one that would detonate a dynamite filled shell, especially older ones whose emulsion had begun to break down, and had begun weeping pure nitroglycerin.
    The same problems apply to sonic shells. Each is in effect a single shot sonic projector, using a reactive crystal as an amplifier for a single overpowering blast wave. However, this crystal is a fundamental flaw in the design, as it is both the primary determinant of how much energy, and therefore how much damage the shell can impart, and how fast it can be accelerated. The answer unfortunately in the latter case is not much. A sonic shell is quite the fragile thing, and heavy impacts, such as being dropped from about two stories, is enough to make shells unreliable at best. This has meant a more low impact solution is required. At the tail end of the 19th century, the Sims-Dudley dynamite gun used a smokeless powder charge to pressurize a piston that launched the dynamite charge down the barrel. The modern system is little different aside from the means of propelling the piston. Instead of a charge of powder, it uses a linear induction motor to fling the piston down the barrel, and launch the shell.

    The Pacifier MAV uses four of these cannons, each 125mm in diameter. With the barrels themselves being only slightly longer than the travel of the piston, and only really being there to support the weight of the shell during the first part of the transit, they are notably lightweight, if only having around five kilometers of range, at least on a ballistic course. While a significant upgrade when compared to the Dynamite guns of the late 19th century, it is far from enough for a general purpose artillery piece of the mid 21st century. The solution however, has already been found in the form of glide munitions. Instead of loading a full caliber sonic munition, a subcaliber round can be loaded, and freeing up the rest of the space for other purposes which in this case is a set of folded wings. This turns the projectile into a high speed glider, and one able to deliver relatively precise munitions as far as twenty or thirty kilometers away. While still extremely short ranged by artillery standards– and though the reality of signal interference of Tiberium fields meant that conventional artillery would not be effective at those ranges regardless, it offers substantial advantages in other areas, most notably when operating in heavily Tiberium infested environments in providing heavy fire support without setting off Liquid Tiberium deposit within the earth's crust, and has a blast radius between fifty and seventy five percent greater than a conventional shell of the same caliber.

    With conflicts with the Brotherhood heating up, losses among the Zone Corps have been steadily increasing, especially as there are few to no good ways to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield. Unless you are in reach of a V-35 configured for medical evacuation, or a Hammerhead, most wounds that would be quickly patched up in other branches and other areas, are significantly more dangerous to the Zone Corps.

    The solution has been a fairly large hovercraft shaped like a box, carrying both the tools to disassemble Zone Armor, and treat the injuries of the trooper inside. The largest hover unit currently fielded by GDI, it is roughly analogous to the Hover MLRS systems of the Second Tiberium War, except instead of a missile system and a cockpit in the middle, the driver is sat right at the front of the vehicle, and the entire system is covered under an angled casemate.

    With responses from both the Forgotten and the Zone Operations Command having been positive, the system is slated to go into full production sometime next year, with political pressure to get it done as soon as possible.

    Ships
    The hydrofoil is centuries old. First patented in 1869, and first tested full scale in 1904, hydrofoils are fast, at least for boats. Rather than driving a hull through the water, hydrofoils primarily ride on top of the water, with only a relatively small blade actually cutting through the water. Attempts at military use emerged in the 1940s, however they did not come into their own until the cold war.
    GDI's newest watercraft, the 50 meter hydrofoil is designed to maintain speeds of 92 kilometers per hour on its foil, and carries a pair of point defense box launchers (one fore and one aft) along with eight standard multirole missiles in two launchers, one on each side of the ship. While their combat endurance is notably poor, their speed and range more than make up for it, with a single ship able to cover a radius of up to 450 kilometers from base, and still return by the end of the day.
    The navy intends to build them at three plants. One for the Asian theater of operations, one for the Atlantic, and one for the Pacific. While the precise locations have not been determined, the projected order is likely to be large, doubling the number of hulls that GDI operates in all likelihood.

    The Governor class is a relatively conservative design, built much like the cruisers and destroyers of the late 20th century. Forward, a pair of twin railgun turrets provide for direct fire against most targets. Behind them, the superstructure, festooned with large radar plates, towers above the rest of the ship. Around the base of the structure, four antimissile point defense systems crouch in armored basins, alongside a pair of rapid fire antiaircraft mounts. Behind the superstructure is a 54 cell VLS system. Behind that, a raised drone shed provides for reconnaissance flights deployed from a catapult rail, and on its roof are another pair of antiaircraft weapons in their own basins.
    The ship has been long requested, and has been paid for in the blood of GDI's navy. With the prewar navy's near exclusive focus on the heavy warships, the carriers and battleships, the destroyers, frigates, and other deepwater escorts were heavily obsolescent, based nearly entirely on pre first tiberium war designs, and were far too few in number. The navy at the time had some 290 ships, 90 of which were capital weight. Today, sixty capital ships, and only some hundred other warships survive. To make good the losses, the navy desires some ninety ships as soon as possible with potential to expand the order to some one hundred and twenty to one one hundred and fifty ships. While this will not be a single tranche of craft, it should make good a substantial portion of GDI's total need for heavy warships. While the ships will not be the only new class desired, they will be the most numerous, and the most versatile, covering everything from naval gunfire support for amphibious operations, to missile strikes, anti aircraft perimeters, and anti submarine warfare.

    Mechs
    The Mark 3 Wolverine is fundamentally a fairly conservative design. Very similar to the Mark 2, its big new features are an expanded power pack, and the reason for the expanded power pack, a pair of rapid fire railguns. While the most basic form was a pair of quadpack railguns taken from Zone Trooper units, these were discarded in favor of attempting to improve the rate of fire from each barrel. The eventual assembly was a rotary tribarrel, using both an active and passive cooling array to keep the rails from melting. While capable of achieving the same velocity as the Zone Trooper's design, each assembly can put more rounds downrange per minute than an entire squad of Zone Troopers. However, this does come with the inherent downsides of needing much more power to keep the guns firing.
    Otherwise, the design is mostly fitted for, but not with. While there have been proposals for a range of upgrades, ranging from smart grenades to shoulder mounted missile racks, to sensor pods, none have made it onto the final design.

    When approaching a naked Mark 3 Titan from the left, it is nearly indistinguishable from its Mark 2 predecessor. Same shaping of the turret, same sensor ball and counterweight, and the same general shape of the legs. However, as one begins to move around it, things become a bit more clear. The other side holds a railgun, rather than the previous standard 152mm gun, while the counterweight is actually a shield for a second, rapid fire railgun. Additionally, there are a number of hardpoints, currently with nothing mounted besides a simple plate of armor over the connectors. The key to what makes the new unit fundamentally different from its predecessors are the internals and the modularity.

    Rather than a simple update to the older model, the Mark 3 is a near complete rebuild, keeping only the shape. Starting in the crew compartment, while the Mark 3 has kept both crew seats from the Marks 1 and 2, the entire suite of controls is available from both positions, and one of the Talon's goals for the platform is to eventually reduce the crew needed to one. Otherwise, the key is in the modular hardpoints. Particle beams, plasma cannons, and even laser systems are planned for both of the main weapons hardpoints, although of significantly different scales. To go with the main weapons mounts, a centerline ventral "crotch mount" and two dorsal mounts round out the potential armament load. The ventral system is aimed to be primarily used either for a targeting pod, or an anti personnel system. Dorsally, the Talons are being more ambitious with a long list of projects, most significantly a series of proposals for either jamming or shooting down incoming missiles.

    However, the new model Titan is not without drama. Rather than being a straightforward upgrade, the system had been iterated time and time and time again not only before and during the Third Tiberium War, but afterwards, in one of the most significant examples of scope and mission creep in recent history. Once funding actually became available, what had grown into a nearly 150 ton monstrosity, had to be pared down to a reasonable state. Working through the nights in shifts for three weeks, Talons engineers had to bring it down to something that could actually be fielded.

    The Havoc scout mech is a 35 ton "light" vehicle, and is absolutely revolutionary. In many ways, it breaks all of the paradigms of the era before the Third Tiberium War. Shields, point defense, speed and agility. Hunched forwards, cockpit jutting out ahead of a pair of reverse kneed legs, munitions pods jutting out over shoulders and beneath the chin. Four toed articulated feet grip the ground as a trio of impulse jets provide not only a lightness of step uncharacteristic of any mech, but also the ability to soar through the air, although currently only on a ballistic arc.
    While its standout feature is the jump jet system, it is built around a trinity of weapons. First and most critically, a centerline rapid fire railgun, on its left shoulder, a combined remote weapons pod, and on the right, a rapid fire grenade launcher. This is the ninth variation of the design proposed, a result of the near decade between the beginning of the design and its completion, with a number of what are now seen as critical survivability elements on nearly any new Initiative vehicle. When compared to the first design, it has nearly doubled in weight, and rather than being a proper scout vehicle, it is perfect for a more active role as a beater, forcing the Brotherhood to respond to fast moving Initiative forces.
    In terms of interest, it fits a role that few other assets in the Initiative arsenal can fill. While the Steel Talons and the Zone Operations Command are the only ones so far who have expressed not only an interest but an actual demand, the Ground Forces have elected to hold off, expecting improved versions to appear in the future, and having other high priorities at this time.

    Aircraft
    The Aurora sacrifices everything for speed. While it shares much of its design with its Apollo cousin, there are many notable differences. For one the engine arrangement. While the Apollo has pretensions of being able to operate at lower speeds, the Aurora does not. This has meant a redesign of the engine arrangement. While the Apollo uses a pair of low bypass Turbojets, the Aurora adds to them with a third Scramjet engine between the other two. In normal operations, the Aurora will come onto its axis of attack well short of enemy positions at a mach 3 supercruise, and then initiate the scramjet to send it screaming well over mach 4, and can even push mach 5 under certain circumstances, at least in early test flights.

    Beyond that, there is the weapons arrangement. While the Apollo technically can, and sometimes does, carry a substantial load of external armament, the Aurora is a significantly more specialized aircraft, and so every external hardpoint that does not absolutely need to be there (such as a pair of external drop tank points to extend the range) has been deleted. Instead, it is wrapped around two modular bays rated for three tonnes each, each able to carry a pair of heavy bunker busters– ones suitable for cracking through mountainous terrain with little collateral damage– or a suite of smaller payloads, such as 100kg inertial guided bombs or munitions sleds. These sleds are relatively simple affairs, equipped with a set of delayed release drogue chutes, used to bring the missiles down into their usable airspeed ranges, as attempting to launch at too high velocities can produce problems with the guidance system.

    The reason for this is a fundamental problem with air defense in the modern world. It is unfortunately short ranged. At a speed of over a kilometer per second during combat operations, an Aurora can cross through the entire threat envelope of any modern defense system, likely before the system can reorient to launch, and has enough speed that some defensive systems, at times cannot retarget fast enough to get an angle for more than a split second. When paired with glide bombs, it is nearly immune to any weapon the Brotherhood of Nod has in its current arsenal.

    The Orca of the Third Tiberium war was originally designed to carry 12 AGM-240 Sidearm missiles or an array of other modular weapons systems, ranging from Sidewinders or autocannon to hundreds of unguided rockets. However, during the war itself, by far the most common configuration was six Sidearm missiles. This was a result of three interlocking reasons. First, before the war, Sidearms were considered to be a relatively safe weapon. High precision fires that did not require long loiter times or repeated passes to empty the magazines. This had meant that they were, by far, the most available weapon in GDI's arsenal during the war itself. Second, NOD commanders on the ground tended to prioritize attacking and destroying factories producing for the Orca platform, sometimes at the expense of broader strategic goals. Third, the Venom increasingly made unsupported attack flights, especially ones requiring longer loiter times far too dangerous. While the Orca still carried out tens of thousands of critical missions and provided air support for Initiative forces everywhere from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America, it did so in a noticeably crippled manner. While some commanders were, by luck, influence, or priority, able to authorize heavier missile loads, full packs were an extreme rarity during the war years. Even after the war, full prewar combat loads have remained a rarity.

    The refit project as originally envisioned was a relatively simple upgrade package, increasing ammunition load, adding conformal drop tanks, and improving the sensor suite, alongside adding air to air missiles. The resulting design, however, aside from technically sharing a name, has seen nearly every component receiving either sweeping changes or being completely replaced. The new Orca, designated A-16, is a radically more capable platform than its predecessor. With the new fuel tanks, it can maintain half again as much combat range when fully loaded, while the new modular missile pods are actually even more convertible than the old A-15 models.

    Beginning at the nose, a remodeled sensor pod integrates the new, more effective, sensor system. Beneath that, a rapid fire railgun on a single axis turret provides capability for strafing runs, and more importantly a means of defense against the near omnipresent threat of Venoms. Wrapped around the cockpit are a number of panels of lightweight carbon fiber and boron carbide. These, along with lightening cuts and the integration of long chain carbon nanotubes have helped keep the weight down, despite all of the additions being made. Along the cheeks, a pair of modular weapons pods have been installed. While not particularly better than the previous model, these are compatible with the new universal rocket systems. Above them, tucked inside the engines, a pair of conformal tanks have been added. Behind that, a third drop tank is located under the tail, for even more range. While the third tank does make it far more difficult to fly, it also significantly increases total range.

    Notes:
    Thought we needed an info-threadmark about all the additions to GDIs arsenal. Ideally I would like to keep this one updated, but there are still a few things I am missing, mostly all the various upgrades to the current arsenal, like to the Predator. If you want to write a short blurb describing an existing vehicle that was upgraded, just ping me. Also I have threadmark priviliges. Bow before my might. :p
     
    Last edited:
  • Informational
    • BOTcommander said:
    GDI Arsenal Addition List

    Infantry Equipment
    GDI's Zone Trooper and Raider Projects are best understood not as a mainline infantrymen, but rather mobile, aggressive, counterforce/countervalue assets, closer in both theory and practice to the Commandos, rather than the rifle squad. Both are intended to fill two primary roles. Either, they were to get into the back lines and raise havoc (as seen during Operation: Payback) or they were to act as primary strike assets, taking the fight to NOD armored columns, or their walker forces. In neither role were they expected to hold positions on their own. However, with the growth of Tiberium, and ZOCOM's perceived need for a new generation of suits, a more combined arms approach is being brought to the fore. Three new suits have exited testing.

    First is the Zone Captain. Taking the sensor package from a GDI Sniper team and mounting it to a suit of powered armor is functionally simple. A laser designator, personal RADAR system, and an expanded communications suite gives these suits the ability to act as forward observers, directing fire support with lethal precision. While not intended for front line combat, it has been given a standard issue light machine gun with minor modifications, most notably reshaped grip surfaces so that the larger hands of the Zone Captain.

    Second is the Defender. While Zone Armor is inherently complicated and expensive, it can be substantially stripped down. Equipped with a disc grenade launcher and a light machine gun, the Defender aims to be a version that reduces the cost of the equipment to being something that can be widely deployed. Instead of each soldier costing nearly as much as an entire squad, a Defender, with its lack of jetpack, advanced HUD, limited communications systems, and stripped down armor and mobility support systems is aimed to resolve. While still more expensive than standard GDI infantry kit, it is still substantially more comprehensive, and provides full coverage against Tiberium exposure.

    Third and finally is the Maurauder pattern. Aimed to be a "Zone Heavy" the Maurauder is built around delivering a constant stream of rocket propelled grenades. While each grenade is small by RPG standards, they are still more than sufficient for use against both infantry and light vehicles.
    Additionally, revisions have been made to the existing Trooper and Raider models, primarily in the form of improved armor, and modified articulation. While substantial work will have to be delayed until there are sufficient myomer bundles to completely rework the systems, small tweaks should keep the suits as they are relevant for decades to come.

    Ground Vehicles
    The MARV as designed is a powerful weapon of war and has proven itself in hundreds of battles. While occasionally defeated such as in the African Red Zone in 2047, each destruction saw the use of overwhelming NOD firepower and repeated attack waves, often using stealth assets to destroy MARV.

    The critical flaw in MARV is its limitation of its Tiberium harvesting and refining methodology. While standard harvesters rake through the topsoil, collecting even relatively small crystals, the fixed harvesting array on a MARV on the other hand cannot sweep the Tiberium instead only collecting the large surface crystals. While admittedly able to collect a substantial amount of resources and able to cut through Tiberium fields, it is also far less than could be collected, and the remaining Tiberium crystals grow back faster than hoped meaning the area must undergo additional sweeps.

    The "super" version of the MARV is intended to solve both of these problems. An additional trailer section behind the main gun turret adds much more space for weaponry and more storage for Tiberium while retaining the (admittedly limited) mobility that makes the MARV functional. This adds two sections for additional gun mounts and more tiberium storage. For the latter problem, the "mouth" of the MARV has been completely redesigned. A pair of sweeper arms, effectively upscaled from the standard Harvester, and able to sweep through the topsoil to bring smaller crystals up and into the MARV, have been installed and are intended to draw Tiberium into its mouth for processing. This will unfortunately render MARV immobile while the sweeper arms are deployed, but we believe this is to be a good trade off.

    Rather than refitting existing MARV plants, the current goal is to build a series of new construction yards, a concession to the fact that the Super MARV is even more excessively armed, armored, and expensive than the "Standard" design.

    GDI's field artillery development has emphasized existing calibers. 152mm smoothbore, 203mm rifled, and 120mm Mortar, the three standard tubes that GDI already uses. The former two are far more plentiful and broadly useful than the latter, making them, in theory, easy candidates for adoption. However, both are extremely heavy and hot munitions. A 203mm gun cannot maintain a sustained rate of fire more than one round a minute. 152mm is not much better. To deal with the Brotherhood's massed assault groups, a smaller, faster firing gun is needed. That is where the mortar comes in. Primarily aimed at the massed assaults that broke GDI positions across the Third Tiberium War, mortar groups are likely to be the mainstay of GDI's nascent artillery corps.

    While the majority of the new pieces are likely to be fixed guns, emplaced in bunkers around the world, the Initiative does want more mobile versions, especially of the 152mm gun as a light alternative to fill the gap between the heavy artillery walkers and the mortar mounted Pitbulls. While the 152mm gun can be mounted to a Guardian chassis, the 203mm gun requires a Predator hull to have even the pretense of mobility.

    Organizationally, the units are intended to be deployed in formations of six three gun batteries. three mortar batteries, two 152mm batteries, and a single 203mm battery. However, this scheme might well change multiple times in the coming months as GDI ground forces experiments with the new assets.

    GDI's modern harvesters were first commissioned in the months after the Second Tiberium War. Mounting sonic systems to help clear Tiberium off of them, they were designed to be lightly armed due to the consensus that the Brotherhood had been effectively defeated and unable to contest harvesting operations. While future designs, such as the circa 2040s Heavy Harvester of the Zone Operations Command built upon this by adding heavier weapons, the core schematics was never displaced, not only in more secure regions of the Yellow Zones, but instead everywhere across Initiative operations. It had the desired durability, economical cost, and all around an easy to use workhorse that makes it accepted. However, the Third Tiberium War put paid to that concept. In many locations, raids and skirmishes around and on harvester operations were– and are– some of the first signs of Brotherhood interest in a region, oftentimes the precursor to general assault operations in a given region.

    The new design is more iterative than revolutionary. Taking ZOCOM's already heavier Harvester schematics, the design work had to add multiple tons from the final weight. Not only to mount the railguns, but also the attached capacitor banks, power systems, and other miscellaneous equipment and maintenance tools. While in some ways this is significantly simpler than the two arm system that ZOCOM favored, in others it is much more expensive and limiting. While it is unlikely to actively replace the vast majority of the designs– for there was nothing inherently wrong with them in the first place– it is likely to supplement the Steel Talon's variant, or otherwise be assigned to the most bitterly embattled Harvesting operations. In long terms, it is hoped that the model could replace the Steel Talon Harvesters wholesale, and for field officers to request greater proportions of the heavily armed harvesting systems.

    In the latter half of the 19th century, the most advanced blasting composition in the world was Dynamite, an emulsion of Nitroglycerin and clay, invented by Alfred Nobel. It was, of course, quickly taken up by militaries, looking for a better means of breaking ships and destroying fortresses. However, it had one critical problem. The deflagration or detonation of existing propellants provided a short, sharp, shock to the system, one that would detonate a dynamite filled shell, especially older ones whose emulsion had begun to break down, and had begun weeping pure nitroglycerin.
    The same problems apply to sonic shells. Each is in effect a single shot sonic projector, using a reactive crystal as an amplifier for a single overpowering blast wave. However, this crystal is a fundamental flaw in the design, as it is both the primary determinant of how much energy, and therefore how much damage the shell can impart, and how fast it can be accelerated. The answer unfortunately in the latter case is not much. A sonic shell is quite the fragile thing, and heavy impacts, such as being dropped from about two stories, is enough to make shells unreliable at best. This has meant a more low impact solution is required. At the tail end of the 19th century, the Sims-Dudley dynamite gun used a smokeless powder charge to pressurize a piston that launched the dynamite charge down the barrel. The modern system is little different aside from the means of propelling the piston. Instead of a charge of powder, it uses a linear induction motor to fling the piston down the barrel, and launch the shell.

    The Pacifier MAV uses four of these cannons, each 125mm in diameter. With the barrels themselves being only slightly longer than the travel of the piston, and only really being there to support the weight of the shell during the first part of the transit, they are notably lightweight, if only having around five kilometers of range, at least on a ballistic course. While a significant upgrade when compared to the Dynamite guns of the late 19th century, it is far from enough for a general purpose artillery piece of the mid 21st century. The solution however, has already been found in the form of glide munitions. Instead of loading a full caliber sonic munition, a subcaliber round can be loaded, and freeing up the rest of the space for other purposes which in this case is a set of folded wings. This turns the projectile into a high speed glider, and one able to deliver relatively precise munitions as far as twenty or thirty kilometers away. While still extremely short ranged by artillery standards– and though the reality of signal interference of Tiberium fields meant that conventional artillery would not be effective at those ranges regardless, it offers substantial advantages in other areas, most notably when operating in heavily Tiberium infested environments in providing heavy fire support without setting off Liquid Tiberium deposit within the earth's crust, and has a blast radius between fifty and seventy five percent greater than a conventional shell of the same caliber.

    With conflicts with the Brotherhood heating up, losses among the Zone Corps have been steadily increasing, especially as there are few to no good ways to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield. Unless you are in reach of a V-35 configured for medical evacuation, or a Hammerhead, most wounds that would be quickly patched up in other branches and other areas, are significantly more dangerous to the Zone Corps.

    The solution has been a fairly large hovercraft shaped like a box, carrying both the tools to disassemble Zone Armor, and treat the injuries of the trooper inside. The largest hover unit currently fielded by GDI, it is roughly analogous to the Hover MLRS systems of the Second Tiberium War, except instead of a missile system and a cockpit in the middle, the driver is sat right at the front of the vehicle, and the entire system is covered under an angled casemate.

    With responses from both the Forgotten and the Zone Operations Command having been positive, the system is slated to go into full production sometime next year, with political pressure to get it done as soon as possible.

    Ships
    The hydrofoil is centuries old. First patented in 1869, and first tested full scale in 1904, hydrofoils are fast, at least for boats. Rather than driving a hull through the water, hydrofoils primarily ride on top of the water, with only a relatively small blade actually cutting through the water. Attempts at military use emerged in the 1940s, however they did not come into their own until the cold war.
    GDI's newest watercraft, the 50 meter hydrofoil is designed to maintain speeds of 92 kilometers per hour on its foil, and carries a pair of point defense box launchers (one fore and one aft) along with eight standard multirole missiles in two launchers, one on each side of the ship. While their combat endurance is notably poor, their speed and range more than make up for it, with a single ship able to cover a radius of up to 450 kilometers from base, and still return by the end of the day.
    The navy intends to build them at three plants. One for the Asian theater of operations, one for the Atlantic, and one for the Pacific. While the precise locations have not been determined, the projected order is likely to be large, doubling the number of hulls that GDI operates in all likelihood.

    The Governor class is a relatively conservative design, built much like the cruisers and destroyers of the late 20th century. Forward, a pair of twin railgun turrets provide for direct fire against most targets. Behind them, the superstructure, festooned with large radar plates, towers above the rest of the ship. Around the base of the structure, four antimissile point defense systems crouch in armored basins, alongside a pair of rapid fire antiaircraft mounts. Behind the superstructure is a 54 cell VLS system. Behind that, a raised drone shed provides for reconnaissance flights deployed from a catapult rail, and on its roof are another pair of antiaircraft weapons in their own basins.
    The ship has been long requested, and has been paid for in the blood of GDI's navy. With the prewar navy's near exclusive focus on the heavy warships, the carriers and battleships, the destroyers, frigates, and other deepwater escorts were heavily obsolescent, based nearly entirely on pre first tiberium war designs, and were far too few in number. The navy at the time had some 290 ships, 90 of which were capital weight. Today, sixty capital ships, and only some hundred other warships survive. To make good the losses, the navy desires some ninety ships as soon as possible with potential to expand the order to some one hundred and twenty to one one hundred and fifty ships. While this will not be a single tranche of craft, it should make good a substantial portion of GDI's total need for heavy warships. While the ships will not be the only new class desired, they will be the most numerous, and the most versatile, covering everything from naval gunfire support for amphibious operations, to missile strikes, anti aircraft perimeters, and anti submarine warfare.

    Mechs
    The Mark 3 Wolverine is fundamentally a fairly conservative design. Very similar to the Mark 2, its big new features are an expanded power pack, and the reason for the expanded power pack, a pair of rapid fire railguns. While the most basic form was a pair of quadpack railguns taken from Zone Trooper units, these were discarded in favor of attempting to improve the rate of fire from each barrel. The eventual assembly was a rotary tribarrel, using both an active and passive cooling array to keep the rails from melting. While capable of achieving the same velocity as the Zone Trooper's design, each assembly can put more rounds downrange per minute than an entire squad of Zone Troopers. However, this does come with the inherent downsides of needing much more power to keep the guns firing.
    Otherwise, the design is mostly fitted for, but not with. While there have been proposals for a range of upgrades, ranging from smart grenades to shoulder mounted missile racks, to sensor pods, none have made it onto the final design.

    When approaching a naked Mark 3 Titan from the left, it is nearly indistinguishable from its Mark 2 predecessor. Same shaping of the turret, same sensor ball and counterweight, and the same general shape of the legs. However, as one begins to move around it, things become a bit more clear. The other side holds a railgun, rather than the previous standard 152mm gun, while the counterweight is actually a shield for a second, rapid fire railgun. Additionally, there are a number of hardpoints, currently with nothing mounted besides a simple plate of armor over the connectors. The key to what makes the new unit fundamentally different from its predecessors are the internals and the modularity.

    Rather than a simple update to the older model, the Mark 3 is a near complete rebuild, keeping only the shape. Starting in the crew compartment, while the Mark 3 has kept both crew seats from the Marks 1 and 2, the entire suite of controls is available from both positions, and one of the Talon's goals for the platform is to eventually reduce the crew needed to one. Otherwise, the key is in the modular hardpoints. Particle beams, plasma cannons, and even laser systems are planned for both of the main weapons hardpoints, although of significantly different scales. To go with the main weapons mounts, a centerline ventral "crotch mount" and two dorsal mounts round out the potential armament load. The ventral system is aimed to be primarily used either for a targeting pod, or an anti personnel system. Dorsally, the Talons are being more ambitious with a long list of projects, most significantly a series of proposals for either jamming or shooting down incoming missiles.

    However, the new model Titan is not without drama. Rather than being a straightforward upgrade, the system had been iterated time and time and time again not only before and during the Third Tiberium War, but afterwards, in one of the most significant examples of scope and mission creep in recent history. Once funding actually became available, what had grown into a nearly 150 ton monstrosity, had to be pared down to a reasonable state. Working through the nights in shifts for three weeks, Talons engineers had to bring it down to something that could actually be fielded.

    The Havoc scout mech is a 35 ton "light" vehicle, and is absolutely revolutionary. In many ways, it breaks all of the paradigms of the era before the Third Tiberium War. Shields, point defense, speed and agility. Hunched forwards, cockpit jutting out ahead of a pair of reverse kneed legs, munitions pods jutting out over shoulders and beneath the chin. Four toed articulated feet grip the ground as a trio of impulse jets provide not only a lightness of step uncharacteristic of any mech, but also the ability to soar through the air, although currently only on a ballistic arc.
    While its standout feature is the jump jet system, it is built around a trinity of weapons. First and most critically, a centerline rapid fire railgun, on its left shoulder, a combined remote weapons pod, and on the right, a rapid fire grenade launcher. This is the ninth variation of the design proposed, a result of the near decade between the beginning of the design and its completion, with a number of what are now seen as critical survivability elements on nearly any new Initiative vehicle. When compared to the first design, it has nearly doubled in weight, and rather than being a proper scout vehicle, it is perfect for a more active role as a beater, forcing the Brotherhood to respond to fast moving Initiative forces.
    In terms of interest, it fits a role that few other assets in the Initiative arsenal can fill. While the Steel Talons and the Zone Operations Command are the only ones so far who have expressed not only an interest but an actual demand, the Ground Forces have elected to hold off, expecting improved versions to appear in the future, and having other high priorities at this time.

    Aircraft
    The Aurora sacrifices everything for speed. While it shares much of its design with its Apollo cousin, there are many notable differences. For one the engine arrangement. While the Apollo has pretensions of being able to operate at lower speeds, the Aurora does not. This has meant a redesign of the engine arrangement. While the Apollo uses a pair of low bypass Turbojets, the Aurora adds to them with a third Scramjet engine between the other two. In normal operations, the Aurora will come onto its axis of attack well short of enemy positions at a mach 3 supercruise, and then initiate the scramjet to send it screaming well over mach 4, and can even push mach 5 under certain circumstances, at least in early test flights.

    Beyond that, there is the weapons arrangement. While the Apollo technically can, and sometimes does, carry a substantial load of external armament, the Aurora is a significantly more specialized aircraft, and so every external hardpoint that does not absolutely need to be there (such as a pair of external drop tank points to extend the range) has been deleted. Instead, it is wrapped around two modular bays rated for three tonnes each, each able to carry a pair of heavy bunker busters– ones suitable for cracking through mountainous terrain with little collateral damage– or a suite of smaller payloads, such as 100kg inertial guided bombs or munitions sleds. These sleds are relatively simple affairs, equipped with a set of delayed release drogue chutes, used to bring the missiles down into their usable airspeed ranges, as attempting to launch at too high velocities can produce problems with the guidance system.

    The reason for this is a fundamental problem with air defense in the modern world. It is unfortunately short ranged. At a speed of over a kilometer per second during combat operations, an Aurora can cross through the entire threat envelope of any modern defense system, likely before the system can reorient to launch, and has enough speed that some defensive systems, at times cannot retarget fast enough to get an angle for more than a split second. When paired with glide bombs, it is nearly immune to any weapon the Brotherhood of Nod has in its current arsenal.

    Notes:
    Thought we needed an info-threadmark about all the additions to GDIs arsenal. Ideally I would like to keep this one updated, but there are still a few things I am missing, mostly all the various upgrades to the current arsenal, like to the Predator. If you want to write a short blurb describing an existing vehicle that was upgraded, just ping me. Also I have threadmark priviliges. Bow before my might. :p
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Neat! I like it. I do expect this to balloon in size here shortly though. Not just because GDI did a fair few iterative upgrades like URLS, laser point defense, and ablat. But also because the Treasury has actually caught up on deploying the immediately available gear for the most part. Not wholly, that's impossible, but pretty close. So in that regard, we're going to see a lot of changes to a lot of stuff in the near future. Just from Q1 2060, Wingman Drones, the escort carrier, and Shark-class frigate will join for starters.

    As a suggestion, it might be worth it to add a 'tech' section for pieces of equipment that are commonly used across multiple platforms such as laser PD, railguns, ablat armor, and URLS missiles, if only so you, or whoever contributes to the article, doesn't need to spend time explaining over and over again what they are.
     
    BOTcommander said:
    Notes:
    Thought we needed an info-threadmark about all the additions to GDIs arsenal. Ideally I would like to keep this one updated, but there are still a few things I am missing, mostly all the various upgrades to the current arsenal, like to the Predator. If you want to write a short blurb describing an existing vehicle that was upgraded, just ping me. Also I have threadmark priviliges. Bow before my might. :p
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Suggestion #1: Under "infantry equipment" you might want to include the 'boron composite armor' and 'armor piercing ammunition' upgrades from the early quest era, along with some choice bits from the railgun upgrade project, all during the First Four Year Plan.

    While these don't represent unique advancements beyond the baseline established in Command and Conquer 3, it's worth establishing what our baseline is, and that we've already picked a lot of the low hanging fruit.

    ...

    Suggestion #2: You may likewise want to incorporate information about major upgrade programs such as the Super Orca and the naval/tank point defense refits. Because, for instance, our Predator tank only vaguely resembles the C&C3 version. This is broadly in line with Decim's suggestion above.
     
    Decim said:
    Neat! I like it. I do expect this to balloon in size here shortly though. Not just because GDI did a fair few iterative upgrades like URLS, laser point defense, and ablat. But also because the Treasury has actually caught up on deploying the immediately available gear for the most part. Not wholly, that's impossible, but pretty close. So in that regard, we're going to see a lot of changes to a lot of stuff in the near future. Just from Q1 2060, Wingman Drones, the escort carrier, and Shark-class frigate will join for starters.

    As a suggestion, it might be worth it to add a 'tech' section for pieces of equipment that are commonly used across multiple platforms such as laser PD, railguns, ablat armor, and URLS missiles, if only so you, or whoever contributes to the article, doesn't need to spend time explaining over and over again what they are.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I like the tech idea.

    Simon_Jester said:
    Suggestion #2: You may likewise want to incorporate information about major upgrade programs such as the Super Orca and the naval/tank point defense refits. Because, for instance, our Predator tank only vaguely resembles the C&C3 version. This is broadly in line with Decim's suggestion above.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    There is a large backlog of information I need to go through to combine all the new tech we put onto the predator into one descriptive blurb. Thats why I said people could submit additions to the article.
     
    It might be interesting to do this with everything we've upgraded in quest.

    Like a infrastructure tab and a agriculture tab and so on.

    Just so we could go and see what and when we did something.

    ...though that's probably quite a lot of work.

    Maybe not then.
     
    So has artillery tech regressed or something? Even WWII 203mm/8 inch guns had a better rate of fire than 1 round a minute. Heck in the mid to late 70s the USN had a successful prototype that could manage 12 rounds per minute.
     
    RF777 said:
    So has artillery tech regressed or something? Even WWII 203mm/8 inch guns had a better rate of fire than 1 round a minute. Heck in the mid to late 70s the USN had a successful prototype that could manage 12 rounds per minute.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Probably partially technology regression because the 'living memory' of making the guns and ammunition hasn't happened for a while. Beyond the Juggernaut that is, and that's... a bit of an oddity considering it's likely a legacy design from the 2nd Tiberium War era which hasn't been updated since. So the ammunition we use isn't great because we don't know how slight differences in the shell design, propellant used, amount of propellant used, amount of explosive used, and all sorts of other things mean you have a weak round that can be fired very fast and far, a weak round that you can't fire too often because it messes up the gun if you do that, or a 'perfect' round where it's the design of the gun itself, vehicle chassis moving it around and crew reloading the gun that limit the firing rate.

    The updated artillery guns we rolled out more recently should have fixed many of those problems affecting the rate of fire along with the accuracy issues. However I can see fixing the rate of fire being secondary to fixing the accuracy issues due to us never giving them enough shells to really care about a better rate of fire as they wouldn't be able to use that rate of fire. Maybe once we actually design a 'from the ground up' next-generation self-propelled gun we'll be good there, rather than using a modified Guardian or Predator chassis when we've forgotten how to design artillery except as a mech.
     
    BOTcommander said:
    GDI Arsenal Addition List

    Notes:
    Thought we needed an info-threadmark about all the additions to GDIs arsenal. Ideally I would like to keep this one updated, but there are still a few things I am missing, mostly all the various upgrades to the current arsenal, like to the Predator. If you want to write a short blurb describing an existing vehicle that was upgraded, just ping me. Also I have threadmark priviliges. Bow before my might. :p
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    About the artillery: the current blurb describes the war-expedient artillery we rolled out at the beginning of the quest, not the modern guns. This may be misleading to new players.

    Here's what I could find on that:

    Q2 2058 (Development)

    At this time, GDI's artillery park is standardized around three guns. First, a 203mm rifle, originally built for the Mark 2 Juggernaut, and later expanded out in lighter configurations. Second, a 152mm smoothbore, And third, a 120mm mortar. Of these, the first and last are quite acceptable. Somewhat short ranged on the former, and somewhat slow firing on the latter, but perfectly acceptable. The problem comes from the middle of the three.

    The current 152mm artillery gun was an emergency measure to create a stopgap solution for the demand for more artillery. As the MBT-6 Predator was undergoing a force wide upgrade to rail guns, its old 152mm smoothbore high velocity guns were available in great quantities, and would not require substantial retooling at a time when GDI was still deep in reconstruction efforts following the Third Tiberium War. Unfortunately, it has performed poorly, with commanders commonly attempting to leave the 152mm pieces behind and requesting greater allotments of 203mm Juggernaut walking artillery and 120mm mortar equipped Bulldogs. Sadly, the problems for the current iteration of 152mm cannons are chronic. As a smoothbore gun, shells are not spin stabilized, and as the gun was designed for high velocity operation it requires very high pressure to properly function, necessitating a thick, heavy barrel. These are useful traits for a gun firing APFSDS shots, as the shot would not engage with the rifling anyway and sheer velocity was the main method of breaching enemy armour. They are not as useful for an artillery piece that is meant to be accurate at great ranges. The new model is substantially optimized for artillery work. First, the gun has been redesigned to work with lower pressures, allowing the barrel to be made thinner and lighter while losing little in range. Second, as the pressure has been lowered it has become possible to use shells with considerably thinner shell walls, holding more filler for better effect on target. Third, the barrel has been rifled, imparting much greater accuracy at range. While the absolute maximum range has shrunk, the effective range has thus been increased. Fourth, the gun can now operate on both integrated munitions, with shell and propellant in the same cartridge, and with separated shell and propellant charges in case the standard load would be inconvenient.

    Beyond modifications to the 152mm gun, the primary changes have been made to the targeting computer. With GDI increasingly relying on forward observers and massed battery fire, the use of centralized fire direction, despite adding in another step between a call for fire and shells reaching the target, increases accuracy and speed of response. In GDI's next generation force, each company will have a fire direction vehicle, almost certainly an extensively modified Guardian chassis, replacing its crew compartment with computers, sensors, and communications equipment to allow for directed fire against targets across an over fifty kilometer range.

    The total refit costs are going to be incredibly marginal. While refits are definitely required, they will not require more than a series of modifications to existing equipment. This will not immediately remove the existing smoothbore guns from service, but it will relegate them to increasingly marginal roles, and over the course of the next five to seven years, they will be removed completely, as GDI transitions to a more modern artillery park.

    Q4 2058

    The deployment of the new tubes has not gone quite swimmingly. While adding rifling to existing guns is simple, and aside from some of the materials science little different than the standard for producing artillery pieces for two centuries, some minor problems have emerged in the fire direction vehicle project. Specifically, in the shock housing for the optical fire control system. While firmly tertiary, intended to be used for direct fire support and in Ion Storms, it is a critical system. The impacts of moving at speed over terrain can throw it slightly out of alignment, producing negative accuracy impacts. While little more than a handful of minor widgets, and not stopping the widespread deployment, it is something that can be fixed with a final infusion of funding, rather than giving it up as a bad job.

    More broadly, the new artillery pieces have only started arriving at the front in small numbers. Primarily so far they have been allocated to fortress towns, where their mobility is not required, and so the problems with the fire control vehicles is a nonissue. However, so far it has been a bare handful, with Arkhangelsk receiving a first shipment of twenty four guns on the 20th of December, and other fortress towns in the region getting smaller complements in the same week. Similar situations are occurring around the world as guns are parceled out in small packets. However, over the course of the next three to nine months, GDI fully expects to have significantly reduced the role of the old smoothbore guns, and replaced them in most priority areas with new rifles.

    Q1 2059

    New versions of the tube artillery systems have begun to enter widespread deployment, with most forward deployed units receiving at least a handful of new guns. However, when looking at ammunition consumption, the numbers are not as good as could be hoped. While the average fire mission has been halved or more, the number of fire missions has drastically increased. The edge in effective range has left the guns firing at longer ranges and effectively in use constantly during operations. On average ammunition consumption has dropped by some ten to fifteen percent, but that is far less than optimistic projections had assumed. While this is likely to continue to drop as more units are equipped, and available fire missions are spread out among more units, it is unlikely to be enough to fundamentally change the shell situation. However, even small reductions are having a noticeable supply impact, with many areas beginning to be able to lay in marginally larger stockpiles of shells that they have not needed to fire, and some units on quieter parts of the front can last for more than a supply convoy between needing more shells, simplifying the overall logistical footprint.

    EDIT: Do you want me to write a paragraph-length summary or are we sticking to Ithillid's descriptions?     Nevermind, reread. I'll see about that blurb.
     
    Last edited:
    @BOTcommander Here's a shorter blurb for the artillery if you still want it.

    As of 2060, GDI's artillery park consists mainly of four guns:

    The 203mm rifle remains secure in its role as GDI's heavy artillery. Formerly based on an 8-inch naval gun, the rifle was first and most famously employed as the three barreled fist of the Juggernaut, and has been retained in this role for decades even as the rest of GDI's conventional artillery withered away. Through long decades of service, the rifle has evolved through a series of marks to be longer and lighter, sacrificing rate of fire for range, accuracy, and more recently the ability to be mounted on lighter tracked vehicles like the Huntsman SPG.

    Today, the 203mm rifle remains the heaviest and longest-ranged tube in the arsenal, and with the introduction of the Huntsman will not be going away any time soon.

    The 152mm smoothbore remains the most common regimental-scale artillery piece in use. A former tank gun obsoleted by tank-portable railguns and retrofitted onto a towed gun carriage as a war-expedient measure, the 152mm smoothbore is heavy, inaccurate, and slow-firing. Furthermore, the gun fires at a very high pressure and a high muzzle velocity--while this nominally extends the maximum range, the gun remains too inaccurate for use at those ranges and the thicker shell walls necessitated limit the effective payload of those shells that do arrive. However, despite its many flaws, the 152mm smoothbore has formed the basis for the revival of massed artillery, particularly mechanized regimental artillery in the form of the Overseer SPG.

    While obsoleted by the 155mm rifle and in the process of being phased out, as of 2060 many smoothbores remain in use among second-line units and rear positions who have yet to receive the new guns.

    The new 155mm rifle, on the other hand, is purpose-built as an artillery gun. More accurate, lighter, faster-firing, and with more effective shells, the rifle is in every way an improvement over the 152mm smoothbore, with the latter being replaced wherever the rifle becomes available. As of 2059 the smoothbore was expected to be phased out by 2066--it remains to be seen if the Regency War will delay or accelerate that process.

    Lastly, the humble 120mm mortar soldiers on mostly unchanged as the battalion organic fire-support option.

    EDIT:Further edits made, particularly regarding the 203mm rifle.
     
    Last edited:
    @BOTcommander The description of the Railgun Harvester is inside the description of the artillery.

    Edit: The Apollo is missing as well, but it isn't technically a new design, but an existing one from C&C 3 given a clear role.
     
    Last edited:
    So why are we not going all-in on the underground mines? That seems like both free money and something that should be investigated. Also, the anti-stealth, particularly because they have new anti-stealth airplanes.
     
    Last edited:
    Phrux said:
    So why are we not going all-in on the underground mines? That seems like both free money and something that should be investigated. Also, the anti-stealth, particularly because they have new anti-stealth airplanes.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Because (assuming you mean Vein Mines) they cost Capital Goods, and so they are very much not free. We're starting on a phase of building up Capital Goods rapidly, but have just hit the point where it's reasonable to work on them. And in the immediate sense, because Yellow Zone Harvesting and a few other projects actively help the war effort a lot more.

    And I'm not sure what you mean about the "new anti-stealth airplanes". There are plans to work on Stealth Disruptors, and we just finished a second phase of anti-stealth sensors, but next turn's military spending is likely going to be focused on Wingman Drone Factories, shipyards, finishing up the Neural Interface deployment, and maybe lasers.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top