Thank you for the numbers at least. It will make future arguments about the talons being underfunded(dice wise at least) a lot easier to make considering well the highest distribution of dice they ever got was the end of the Second FYP where they got a dice distribution of 9% of total dice. After which it goes to the current five year plan standing at 8.5 % followed by the first FYP at 4% approx.
Dice wise the distribution isn't looking so good but I imagine cost and other factors came into it . Still it leaves much to be desired imo. However I don't think this is the FYP to fix this because of the war. Though it does look promising that this 5yp we might break the 10% distribution assuming the war doesn't last too long.
Two things to consider:
The first is a realistic allotment of dice. The Talons don't actually have many projects or large projects at any one time. They are one of six branches of the military. It would be unreasonable to expect them to
ever have more than 15% or so of our dice budget except when we were surging a project for them that needed to be done in a hurry, and 10% is probably more realistic and sustainable long-term.
I say "10%" not least because a lot of the time, stuff they prototype has to be implemented by other branches for us to get full effect (e.g. they prototype point defense lasers, then we have to actually install them on the Ground Forces' tanks and the Navy's ships). This, perforce, means that to get full benefit from a Talons project, we wind up spending like 1-4 dice on the Talons... then 6-10 dice on other branches of the military, if not more.
That's the first reason. The second is bigger...
The history.
Looking at the past decade, Talons dice funding came in three waves- well, a ripple and two waves. The first ripple was early in the First Four Year Plan, when we did the performance review, the Talons made some recommendations, and we developed the Wolverine Mark 3. However, it soon became apparent that military projects were gonna be expensive, and we had a
LOT on our plate to rebuild the civilian economy.
You may recall that even at the end of the First Plan we still had large numbers of citizens in refugee camps, we were still dealing with a (mitigated) doomsday clock until the economy collapsed for lack of Capital Goods, and the Consumer Goods situation didn't bear thinking of and the meter was hard up against the "bottom of the dial" peg. We had no fortress towns (yet), reconstruction of the direct damage from the war was very much not over, we didn't have universal mass transit or Internet even in the Blue Zone cities, we didn't have the fusion lift program fully active, we didn't have the Blue Zone sonic perimeters fully established, we had
barely started
Enterprise and no other stations, we had minimal commsats and had done no orbital cleanup, the school system was only partially back online, our ASAT control systems were no more resilient than back when Nod punched out the GSFC control hub at the start of Tib War III and nuked the
Philadelphia, we didn't have complete production lines of Apollo fighters,
no production lines for hydrofoils, and such an incomplete set for Zone Armor
for ZOCOM itself, such that our ZOCOM infantry were often going out into Red Zones wearing frickin' hazmat suits, and we had effectively no shell plants for our then-fairly-new artillery.
And that was at the
END of the plan,
AFTER four years of us spending all of 10 R on the Talons the entire time.
[deep breath]
In the face of all this, it is unsurprising that during the First Four Year Plan, the branch of the military specifically responsible for developing exotic high-powered next-generation weaponry didn't get much love. We did spend a fair number of Military dice during those first four years, but most of them were spent on just rolling out refits we already had, stuff that in
Command and Conquer 3 is only available as special upgrades to GDI's regular troops. Like arming our tanks with railguns instead of regular cannons, or putting all our soldiers into boron-composite armor instead of Kevlar. There would not have been
any hope of funding serious development of next-generation weaponry on a large scale.
Then comes the Second Plan.
2054 was our first introduction to the post-reapportionment income scramble. We basically phoned in our Military dice for most of that year, only getting serious in 2054Q4, which I believe would have been around the time Reynaldo screwed over one of our glacier mining programs. I think this was also around the time that military priority indicators were introduced, so that was good... aaand we learned just how fucked the situation was from the Talons' point of view.
Cue 2055Q2-2056Q2, when we spent an average of two dice per turn on the Talons, which is
actively disproportionate... because we were trying to fill a tremendous pit in a very short amount of time. In the space of little more than a year, we went into the Talons category and unlocked an entire new category of industrial project, two classes of combat mech, and the foundation of our current-generation laser point defense systems.
So what the hell happened, you ask?
Well, we had a bit of a pause to catch our breath after 2056Q2, probably not least because with the advent of the laser point defense the Talons had become a victim of their own success. Suddenly, we had very desirable point defense refits for our tanks and ships, and that sucked a fair amount of oxygen out of the room, along with other priorities like the
Governor yards.
Even so, that pause only lasted about three quarters.
But wait, Simon, you ask, looking at my own damn list, we spent nothing on the Talons for literally nine quarters straight. What are you talking about?
The stabilizer constellation.
From 2057Q2 through 'Q4, we spent basically every Free die we had on the Tiberium category to get the tiberium stabilizers into orbit as fast as possible. With a 2000-point project to clear, we had no time or interest for "extras," and the then-available Talon projects (the Mastodon, the Havoc, and plasma cannons) were probably seeming kind of...
extra... at the time. Given that we were back down to five Military dice per turn, doing a deployment on the Mastodon or the Havoc would have eaten up something like a third of our available dice in that short timeframe, and even if we developed plasma cannons we'd never find the budget to put them on anything in 2057... or in 2058, Year of the Reapportionment.
So yeah, 2058 wasn't a great time to be a Talon asking for money, either.
But you will note that we are now back to something approaching the surge funding of 2055-56. Not
quite there, mostly because the Great Warlord Dogpile has stacked on an extra sense of urgency to projects favored by the other branches.
But we're back up there.
I fully expect Talons funding to stay reasonably stable,
except during leap years (reapportionment) and emergency times, from here on out.
steel talon are as expensive as other branches or more expensive def not cheaper
Actually, Talons projects fall into one of two categories.
Either they want to develop and deploy a mech, which is usually 10 R/die (cheap), or they want to do a development project on some kind of high-tech weapon system, which is usually 25-30 R/die... but then, so are most other development projects.
You don't see them demanding massive sustained investment of 5+ die into single 15-20 R/die major projects like some other branches of the military (looking at you,
Navy).
I thought it came from the Nod Gacha.
Are we funding Nod enough?
[smiles]
Let's have another history review.
We got crystal beam lasers from the Nod gacha.
Then we had a Talons project for "make a crystal beam
point defense laser."
Until we did that particular Talons project, we didn't have laser point defense options.
Seriously, read the history. In 2056Q1, we had three laser projects, all based off the crystal beam laser research. They were
Tactical Airborne Laser Development, Orbital Defense Laser Development, and
Rapid Fire Laser Weapons Development. In that turn, we did the third of those options- the Talons option.
The very next turn, we still had airborne and orbital laser options. But
pop, up came a new project under the Talons.
Laser Point Defense Systems Development. Gated behind the Titan Mk 3 project.
Like good little boys/girls/enbies, we duly beelined the Titan deployment with three dice. This in turn unlocked
High Efficiency Heat System Development (not a Talons project) and the now-unlocked
Laser Point Defense Systems Development (totally Talons).
And then
bam, in 2056Q4, there we were, with a laser variant of
Remote Weapon Systems Deployment Predator (now an effectively mandatory option).
Naval point defense with lasers came later, in 2058Q2... but the technology of laser point defense within the Earth's atmosphere simply
did not exist for GDI until we'd unlocked it through not one, but
three Talons projects, each gated behind another.
