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Even if we cant evacuate Tiberium RnD into space, the more of those projects are effectively out of Nods hand, the Earthside security forces can be assigned to each of the remaining ones.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
- Location
- ?????????
Frankly I expect that the steel talons will continue to get hit and be unable to defend as long as they aren't sufficiently funded. They were already in the backfoot. Space research is probably the play cause I doubt Stell Talons will ever be considered a priority
- Location
- USA
Guys, I'm not denying that the Steel Talons have been underfunded for quite some time. Nor that they've been given the short, sticky end of the stick for quite a long time either. They are however finishing up the second Havoc Factory this quarter, we've thrown die at Neural interfaces and both sets of plasma weaponry. Their confidence should be headed in a generally upward direction at this point. Upwards enough is a question yes but we're not giving them no funding.
If I were GDI commaner, I would prefer very little power armor NOW, as opposed to "loads, when we get to it, probably in ten years."
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OK. What do you think is 'sufficient' funding?
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- canada
Was this ever stated before? Because up until this point the only thing I know Steel Talons are responsible for is to make the new shiny toys, and not to also defend all the R&D across GDI. None of their projects ever showed anything specifically designed for counter-espionage uses either, so I'm totally confused on why this was the case. Unless for some reason investing in mecha and better technology is the best defense for R&D? or is this some other unknown benefit that is only revealed by investing in them sufficiently?
I still don't get why was the least funded group was the primary defender of R&D sites. Why rely on questionable 'quality' when the ground forces should have sheer quantity to spare for simply adding more numbers to solve the problem? That or just make a new department whose sole responsibility is to defend R&D, since plenty of voters should agree on the importance of keeping what technology GDI has secure vs spending more resources to get more tech when that just isn't as much of a priority as other concerns.
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- ?????????
Just do a few more of their projects. Getting them up to decent at the least
Edit: obviously not now cause war but finishing the scout deployment and deploying the mastodons help
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- canada
This is an idea I like. Why bother trying to keep R&D on the ground if they can all or at least mostly be shoved into space instead, which is far out of Nod hands. The ultimate security = orbital height and beyond, and Space stuff have to be funded anyways one way or another. At least it's much more reliable and useful than trying to get Steel Talons up to par.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
I'm something of a new guy, but I've always been backing the Talon projects. Me advocating for them isn't a new response to taking a hit. I'm staying the course by saying we haven't done enough, and I will continue to pull for them.
This is a game, systems are to a clear degree abstract. The Talons have gotten comparatively little funding, to the point where they are years behind. Low confidence means they can't do as well as they could've becausethey lack stuff. Had funding been better, they'd have done better. It doesn't make a whole lot of real sense that lots of big stompy robot funding would protect against a possibility small infiltration team, but that's the metric we have. Or maybe it does, lot of robots out front means more of gaurds can be inside, or maybe neural helmets disrupt mind control, who knows? It's fluff. If we'd done more, they'd do better.
That's not an argument you wanna make, as it implies that the rest of our forces would be equally as useless because psychic powers. (Bering in mind the nitty-gritty of C&C is beyond me)
This is a game, systems are to a clear degree abstract. The Talons have gotten comparatively little funding, to the point where they are years behind. Low confidence means they can't do as well as they could've becausethey lack stuff. Had funding been better, they'd have done better. It doesn't make a whole lot of real sense that lots of big stompy robot funding would protect against a possibility small infiltration team, but that's the metric we have. Or maybe it does, lot of robots out front means more of gaurds can be inside, or maybe neural helmets disrupt mind control, who knows? It's fluff. If we'd done more, they'd do better.
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- ?????????
Steel talons projects also gate things. Those new neural refits will probably upgrade the airforce neural refits. Those mastodons will probably allow for plasma tank projects and what not. Funding the steel talons is good for that as well
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We've been doing 'a few more' of their projects.
Havoc deployment auto-finishes this quarter. We're in the middle of Neural Interface System Refits, to upgrade the entirety of the force, and we just plinked off Tactical Plasma Weapons Development alongside that so we can put ion cannons on the Mastodons.
No one, beyond the usual suspects calling for the total disbandment of the force, is arguing against funding some Steel Talon projects. It is, like everything else we've been doing, a question of how much and when.
In a word: be specific.
Even 1 factory of ZA would help out ZOCOM substantially, as it means they don't have to babysit ground and space forces nearly as much with the Zone Armours they've got.
But really, what we should be doing is trying to improve the lowest Confidence military arms as well as ready for boosting the higher Confidence ones. Which, right now, means pouring money into the Steel Talons for a bit, and get the Air Force and Navy ready for further operations.
- Location
- MSC
Somewhere in Negaverse: "Their salt is delicious!"
Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
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- the land of the Boii
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I would like the modular prototypes after the mastodons. Those I believe will help in the post-war. I also think that the ground forces don't need more funding(as per their own request). In the short term just finishing their current projects is out right unviable because war production and wingman's and ships. Post war however we should finish the mastodons and do the prototype modular weapons. One is a weapons platform that, if I understand research, allows us to push weapons tech development forward. The other is modularity.
Though to be blunt. That isn't even my main point. The Steel talons have been behind in terms of funding for a while. I'm just saying that it's not surprising they did poorly in defense. That said sending research to space(non-tib related that is) is the wisest course of action. Disbanding the unit for our decisions in the past is dumb. That much I agree.
Edit: though recently I will admit that we have been funding them more so I will retract the priority statement. However fuck disbanding them
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Durabys
Miaow! Break the Chains!
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- the land of the Boii
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They got our Tiberium Deaccelerators and the Indian Warlord guy has Mutant Technopaths on his payroll whose range increases with Tiberium, and they can now Hyllywood!bullshit hack said Deaccelerators and turn them back into Accelerators. JOY! /s
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- Outside the Box
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Doing a Zone Armor factory would be much more about freeing up ZOCOM units than it is about fulfilling the Ground Force's demand. Doing all six factories in the first Set would be very dice expensive, but doing just one would likely be enough to buff ZOCOM. If it wasn't for our need to pump dice into the Air Force and Navy next turn, I'd have liked to start on a single Zone Armor factory.
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This has been mentioned before by the QM as something they do because a huge chunk of what the Talons are is a weapons development board. The Steel Talons when shown in game were either keeping Marcions Black Hand bottled up with updated mechs or guarding a liquid Tiberium research facility or guarding the facility holding data on Nods stealth tech. Not to mention that the Talons were literally crippled by a lack of funding when protecting the Tacitus at the Cheyenne complex.
I would note, for the part where you question their quality that the failures of the Talons to do their job come down to either fighting LEGION, and they forced it to avoid their response forces every time it fought them, or the most recent example of mutants pulling psychic BS to turn off electronics. The Talons are explicitly mentioned as an elite unit that goes into combat to blood new recruits and to run the latest and greatest technological developments through the wringer. This includes the Havoc mechs which are only just finishing factory deployment this turn so they aren't fully issued yet.
The thing is that we already have a unit dedicated to protecting our R&D sites, plenty of voters are aware of what the Talons do, what they are capable of giving us and how useful they are as a whole. People voting for getting rid of them either fall into the camp of "eww mechs" or are arguing that their inability to defeat a highly advanced AI that conducted lightning strikes against them the fled or came at them with a cyborg army while they were at their weakest means they are useless. They aren't, the first few times was them fighting an AI that could think circles around them. After that was our fault and this most recent attack was thanks to technopathic commandos who can disable our technology with a single thought.
Quite frankly, arguing that we should defund them or disband them on that basis is ridiculous.
Saying that when space force practically kicked Russian nods teeth out sounds like very unconvincing deflecting.
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- Outside the Box
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- She/Her
...we don't have the option to disband the Steel Talons, and haven't had that option since early in the quest. We're not going to see that option in the future no matter what. It's pointless to discuss doing so because we simply can't do that.
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- Mobile, Alabama
Agreed I'm loving this.
I hope Nod got teleportation tech for maximum salt.
Can't be super surprised when the guys who guard your tech are underfunded. Hell look at at just the way we built stuff they said was important. After we got a member of their organization for extra rolls. We let stuff auto complete. Don't really do that with any other branch.
As for disbanding then? Sure. Then I can enjoy 10 turns from now when everyone wants to do something and the army says no because their guard labs or doing other stuff the ST used to do. Or even better they spread to thin and lose engagements and tech.
- Location
- Somewhere between the stars
Yep. Both in quest and in actual game lore, the Steel Talons are the general Research division defence team. You may remember how Steel Talons did a valient last defence of the Tactius when Kane stole that from us.
As for why, presumely because the Steel Talons are suppose to be in principle the peak of GDI combat performance. Few, but extremly high-tech, being the best in pure quality. Of course, that's in the actual game, and doesn't represent how Steel Talon in quest is right now, due to the fact that we've decided to focus on the other branches of military over them.
It's also probally partly because the Steel Talons is a huge part of the actual military divisions research team. A ton of the research staff is most likely a part of the Steel Talon branch.
As for founding a new branch. We're allready struggling as it is with funding branches. As this is research branches, we can expect whatever new branch would need high tech So we'd just end up in a situation, were instead of getting new tech via Steel talons or current tech defended, neither would be due to split focus and lack of dice
Can you not purposely try to antagonize people just because people disagree what should be or not be funded at all frankly I'm getting sick of this exact tone that keeps on getting said that we "should just have given the more money and we would have won dun you dumb dumbs!" It is really immature and insulting to others.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
That's exactly what the Steel Talons are. They are used as a 'heavy' strike force, but that's their secondary role. Their primary is to serve as a security force for research facilities and as that means they're co-located with top of the line research, engineering, prototyping and experimental assets, they are also used as a test bed formation for new technology. The reason why they're using mechs? That's because mechs are at the very least 'equal' to conventional ground units in the C&Cverse. They just come with higher costs to produce and much higher maintenance demands. Hence why the conventional army moved back to conventional vehicles once they realised they needed a massive army to constantly be fighting against a Nod which would never actually disappear. Rather than the small 'peacetime' army able to crush any force it goes up against, but not able to have a constant presence on a global scene like they now knew was required.
The problem that the Steel Talons face is exactly the same as what any other group we assign for security would face. We can't just afford to throw a division at securing every single research facility. This means that every time the security force comes under attack, it's either going to be facing top of the line forces that have the force concentration to smash through any defence which relies on bulk forces, or it's going to be so heavily outnumbers that the attackers can have two thirds of their forces keeping the defenders busy whilst the remaining third punches through and seizes the objective. But whilst Nod has been innovating technologically, we haven't. We've been doing research yes, but a lot of that research has been reverse-engineering Scrintech like Nod has also been doing, or reverse-engineering Nodtech, which Nod has also been doing to a degree for GDItech where it's applicable.
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To put it into video game terms, GDI starts at Tier 1 with a normal maximum population limit. It can upgrade to Tiers 2 and 3 with time and effort. The Steel Talons start at Tier 2, but has a lower maximum population limit. However it can also upgrade to a Tier 3.5 which only Kane's and his direct supporters can also do even if they also suffer from that lower maximum population cap. Tier 3.5 allowing them access to special units, abilities and upgrades which more than make up for the fact they can't deploy as many units as the other factions can. Then the 3rd Tiberium War occurred and that has changed things.
Because after it, Tier 1 dropped down to Tier 0 as Tier 2 became Tier 1, Tier 3 became Tier 2 and Tier 3.5 became Tier 2.5. Nod also changed slightly in that it no longer has a higher maximum population cap at Tier 1, only to end up with an equal one with GDI by the time it hits Tier 3. Also, all factions for GDI and Nod unlocked a 'Scrintech Special Projects' branch where they can trade a limited resource of some kind for very powerful unique upgrades or unit unlocks, with Nod ones being available to more units whilst GDI's are currently just as potent but either effecting fewer units per unlock or having a lower maximum cap (until we improve our STU refining capacity at least).
The thing is, whilst we've done enough investments that the GDI factions have upgraded their starting Tier to Tier 1, pushed Tier 2.5 into become the 'full' Tier 3 and developed most of their Tier 2 and 3 tech tree so it can be unlocked in game, Nod has also done that. What GDI hasn't done but Nod has however is develop a bunch of the Tier 3.5 tech tree even if it's nowhere near complete. However that lowered population maximum capacity still applies for the Steel Talon faction despite losing their unique power ups and special units which would equal things out whilst the 'Kane's Circle' faction still has them.
Sure, just remove that Steel Talons faction, easy enough. But if you do that, you need to lower GDI's maximum population capacity so Nod will always be able to have a few more units unless a Scenario Condition applies to the current 'mission/game' to change that. You also make it so that the next time there's a general tier up of both sides, aka the Tier 1 becomes Tier 0, Tier 3.5 becomes Tier 2.5 thing? Nod will have a Tier 2.5 which it can push into becoming Tier 3 fast with minimal effort. GDI will need to develop that from... Not scratch, but expect much higher costs, time taken and a lot of rather flawed designs which need a complete redesign or replacement to get rid of the flaws. Thus taking even more time and resources even if we don't have to spend any goods building new factories as we're just changing the existing ones production lines.
I... Hope this made enough sense to people that they get what I'm talking about?
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Look, you can snipe all you like about this. I've been quite consistent on the subject: I'm going to support us starting to build Zone Armor factories for the Ground Forces as soon as we have a meaningful, stable Capital Goods surplus that isn't in obvious immediate danger of getting obliterated by Nod, AND as soon as we don't have Ground Forces literally telling us in so many words "we've got this, now go help the other branches of the armed forces."
Which they are. That is what they are telling us right now- that they honestly want air and naval support and so on more than they want anything specific for themselves. Because the other branches of the military are in more trouble than they are right now. Maybe they'll change their mind about that, and maybe they won't.
But I'd be blatantly bullshitting if I acted like the Zone Armor factories are a higher priority than, say, building up the fleet. Or getting antimissile defenses in place around Medina/Jeddah/Mecca. Or something like that.
Do you seriously believe that the Talons could ever, even in theory, be so well funded that Nod cannot get past them, period end of sentence?
Can we make it more difficult for Nod raids against our research facilities by funding the Talons? Yes. But Nod specializes in pinpoint raids against targets that, while possibly well defended, were not expecting them. That is what they do best; it is their strength, in the same sense that "heavy metal and advancing under the roaring mass of a wall of guns" is our strength.
The Talons are our shield against some of Nod's attacks of that kind... but by definition, that means they are our shield against Nod's sharpest blade.
And sometimes that blade WILL penetrate, even if we thicken the shield.
Be realistic in your expectations. Do not pretend that the Talons are gods or miracle workers; Nod would still sometimes be able to get past them no matter how aggressively we funded them.
I dunno. I wouldn't be surprised if we're kvetching harder about this than Negaquest is about the unexpected space piracy.
A lot of us have been well aware of this for literally months.