I will vote for these options.
Last edited:
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
I will vote for these options.
Not that it's relevant for a while yet, but I think that Enterprise's three industrial bays should go to foundational industry for the Earth-Luna system. So station construction for further orbital development, fusion craft for Lunar development, and then a wildcard that could be either g-drives or advanced production or military production. Personally I'm leaning towards the zero-g products and then doing military/g-drive bays on the second gen industrial station, but I'm not 100% dedicated to it.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
No.
See, the thing is, it's not vital, not somehow a mandatory law, that we build up to OSRCT Phase 8 or whatever. We don't ever actually have to do that. We've got a Plan commitment to Phase 4, and we can build Phase 4 just fine with what's already available. OSRCT Phase 4 is not locked behind building a dedicated support bay aboard Enterprise, we can already see that option. It's not locked.
We need to think about the actual space infrastructure, because that's going to be a huge part of GDI and humanity's future going forward. Ability to pelt the surface of the Earth with heavier or more numerous drop-trooper formations is all well and good, but it's not, when you get right down to it, why we are in space.
We need to think about where we plan to even build our future G-drive ships, our future cargo craft for moving goods to the moon and back, to Mars and back. All of that matters, and we're not going to get a viable chance to do much about it if we use up our Enterprise bays on building up a superheavy Space Force drop troop capability.
Pretty sure we'd be building a dedicated orbital factory for those military goods, not building them aboard Columbia or Shala. Enterprise already has production lines for military goods to support OSRCT on a limited scale even now, mind you- but that is itself an argument for dispersal, because ideally you don't want all your production of OSRCT weaponry to be on the same station forever.
Then we cripple our future space expansion because we have no dedicated large scale shipyards to produce interplanetary spacecraft. We're stuck building our ships on Earth, which means designing them around the constraint of "must be able to climb out of the Earth's gravity well," and can do only bespoke ship construction (or wait a decade or so for the next round of industry).
We need shipyards.
We don't need super-heavy maximalist OSRCT Phase 6+7 or whatever.
Especially since a G-Drive ship can't take off from Earth under its own power, so the only place to build them is in space for now.
That's a long time to wait for the capacity to mass-produce the Conestogas, although if the "advanced production" option is good enough I could maybe see it.
Right now I think it would come down to STU cost for me, so no way to tell for sure until we see exactly what they all consume/produce. If the advanced production is good enough to, say, mass produce flawless optical mediums that make advanced laser deployment cost fewer STU's or something it would be pretty tempting compared to a g-drive shipyard that stretches our STU supply further.
Regarding Venus, we're likely to be getting R&D for atmospheric containment shields in SCEDquest, which could possibly lead to an atmospheric exclusion shield that would allow operation on Venus.
Which actually leads to another crazy idea - shields used to hold back water from entering a certain area, allowing specialized harvesters to operate underwater. But that's probably quite a ways down the road.
Which actually leads to another crazy idea - shields used to hold back water from entering a certain area, allowing specialized harvesters to operate underwater. But that's probably quite a ways down the road.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's the precursor to future GDI doctrine for planetary assaults and the like so from that standpoint it's very important. However, I'd say that we want the fusion and G-Drive lines along with the advanced goods line to start with.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Given that we were hardly even tracking the STUs as an indicator back when Pathfinder was built, I'm pretty sure we could build a respectable number of G-Drive ships.
With that said, if we could get just a few of the Conestogas built bespoke-style while churning out fusion craft in a dedicated yard, I would consider that a viable alternative for the coming 5-10 years in particular.
If we can't build shields to hold out seawater to a depth of 700-800 meters or so, I'm not sure how we're supposed to hold out the Venusian atmosphere. It's the same pressure either way.
If we're willing to look to stuff that won't matter for 50-100 years...
We should also be considering the opportunity costs of clipping the wings of our space colonization project for lack of actual ships.
Just saying.
But I see we're in agreement over actual conclusions; my point is just that these hypothetical higher phases of OSRCT aren't somehow vital to short term security.
- Location
- USA
Considering station building and lunar mining are in our plan goals those two bays seem like no brainers at least.
After that... either zero g products or ship construction I imagine.
After that... either zero g products or ship construction I imagine.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
We don't need a station-building bay to complete our station-building plan goal. We just need to actually build the station Enterprise itself and we'll have fulfilled our promise.
- Location
- USA
Well... yeah.
But I'm assuming it would reduce the cost of phase 5 of enterprise and we will want to build the other two stations as well.
Seems like a obvious bay to go for.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Not necessarily.
First, it would reduce the cost of Enterprise Phase 5 by a very small amount given how the bay is known to work. We'd get... I believe it would be -10 Progress on a project that will cost over 1000 Progress.
The reduction on the other stations would be significant, and that would save us some Orbital dice next Plan. The question is whether that's worth it. Me, I think "no," if it means sacrificing our ability to have certain other kinds of infrastructure that help us in other ways. I'm particularly interested in shipyard infrastructure, because fusion and G-drive ships are one of the big limiting factors on how much we can do in space, and it's very inefficient to build all our ships on Earth because it means they have to be designed with the constraint of being able to take off under their own power in one gravity.
- Location
- USA
Is -10 the reduction amount because if so we could probably wait until Ent 5 to grab it? As it is though it will also reduce the cost of further industrial stations as well the other two stations we have open once we finish off the current orbital plan requirements. The additional industrial stations coming online during the next plan would help a lot. Plus if we make any promises to do X phases of columbia and/or shala that will save dice next plan. Just becomes a question of Ent 4 vs Ent 5
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The last time we were told how station cost reduction worked, it was "you get -10 to the cost of the current phase, and this correspondingly doubles for each successive phase." As a result, this is virtually insignificant for a station that's already at Phase 4 before you get the bonus, but very impactful for a station that hasn't been started yet because then it's -10 on Phase 1, -20 on Phase 2, -40 on Phase 3, and so on, with a cumulative cost reduction of -310 Progress, or about four Orbital dice less to build the whole station.
Since Ithillid keeps slinging around "ten years" before we build more industrial stations, I suspect it's not that simple.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
Yeah, I'm just going to chip in and say that no matter what, the Advanced Goods Production Bay absolutely has to be one of the three that we build on Enterprise. Because there's just so many benefits and unlocks it's likely to give us, especially if it means we can mass produce something almost as good as an STU using version due to... Well, let's just say that unless we get lucky and roll a STU Refining tech sometime soon, we're not going to have even half as many STUs as we need for current projects to complete deployment for multiple Five-Year Plans.
In simpler terms? Priority 1: Advanced Goods Production Bay. Priority 2: Absent. Priority 3: Anything else. That's how important it is.
Having said that, I'm thinking that I want the Station Building Bay as the second of the Bays, and I'm divided between Fusion Craft and Military Goods for the third. G-Drive is important yes, but I don't think we're going to be moving beyond the bespoke production level for G-Drive ships for most of a decade, especially if we see Fusion Drive Craft getting improved, as the near future is going to be focused on Luna, Mars, Inner System Asteroids and Venus. All places that the G-Drives massive travel time advantage is extremely beneficial, but not critical like it is for Outer System developments.
Having said that, the second Industrial Station we build is absolutely going to have G-Drive Shipyards and either Fusion Drive Shipyards or Military Goods, whichever doesn't end up on the Enterprise.
In simpler terms? Priority 1: Advanced Goods Production Bay. Priority 2: Absent. Priority 3: Anything else. That's how important it is.
Having said that, I'm thinking that I want the Station Building Bay as the second of the Bays, and I'm divided between Fusion Craft and Military Goods for the third. G-Drive is important yes, but I don't think we're going to be moving beyond the bespoke production level for G-Drive ships for most of a decade, especially if we see Fusion Drive Craft getting improved, as the near future is going to be focused on Luna, Mars, Inner System Asteroids and Venus. All places that the G-Drives massive travel time advantage is extremely beneficial, but not critical like it is for Outer System developments.
Having said that, the second Industrial Station we build is absolutely going to have G-Drive Shipyards and either Fusion Drive Shipyards or Military Goods, whichever doesn't end up on the Enterprise.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yo. We want G-Drive ships so we can do mining across the entire Solar System. Like. There's so many resources we can access there, and G-drive ships are so fast we don't technically even need advanced space habitats to get started at it. (We still want those obv.) Lunar mining is small potatoes; we've got the entire asteroid belt, Mars (including Eezo), Jupiter's moons, Saturn's moons/ring, a bunch of dwarf planets, absurd amounts of helium and hydrogen, other stuff I don't even know about... and I guess eventually we'll mine Venus's Tiberium too, but that's besides the point. There's an absolutely absurd amount of things we can mine outside our planet.
We shouldn't chain ourselves to Earth orbit; not when we have the G-Drive. And even if you want to maximize Earth-Luna space infrastructure, the best way to do that is by extending our reach to the full bounty of Sol system. No, it won't ever be as easy and convenient as mining our BFF Tiberium, but there's so much more stuff out there than our one little planet has. Granger dared to mine the Tiberium glaciers, where so many others would have never even tried. Opening up some dang space mines is a far more obvious path to more and more RpT, what with entire planets making those Glaciers look like splinters.
We shouldn't chain ourselves to Earth orbit; not when we have the G-Drive. And even if you want to maximize Earth-Luna space infrastructure, the best way to do that is by extending our reach to the full bounty of Sol system. No, it won't ever be as easy and convenient as mining our BFF Tiberium, but there's so much more stuff out there than our one little planet has. Granger dared to mine the Tiberium glaciers, where so many others would have never even tried. Opening up some dang space mines is a far more obvious path to more and more RpT, what with entire planets making those Glaciers look like splinters.
I had the mindset that large-scale G-Drive production is multiple years away, but I guess that's only if we want it to be multiple years away. Which we don't.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
Yes, this is important but it's also why I think this can be relegated to the second industrial station in about ten years. Because G-Drives are going to always be extremely STU expensive for a long time. And we're unlikely to solve that issue any time soon. This means that we're going to have a very limited production rate for new G-Drive ships for quite a while. On the other hand, we can absolutely build as many fusion drive ships as we want. Which means that we can do things like setting up a shipping lane from say, the Earth-Luna system to Mars or Venus which transfers bulk cargo and has a new ship arrive every day despite it taking them six months to travel the full distance at worst. Whilst also doing a lot of other things at the same time.
We're also likely to be more interested in developing things within the inner system where fusion travel times aren't too bad for the next decade at least, despite the 'untold bounties' the rest of the system offers. Because that's the area in which the tiberium problem is (so far) contained within, and also contains the three locations easiest to build the infrastructure needed to support large populations at. Those being Earth Orbit, Luna and Mars.
Or to put it bluntly, those small potatoes with a tiny luxury good growing garden are what we need right now. Getting large potatoes and a full farm for everything would be great and absolutely needed in time. But better to build the house we're going to be living in first rather than having massive farm than gives us more goods than what we know to do with whilst we're still in a leaky tent.
Heck, we can put the G-drive assembly in one of the Bays on Columbia or Shala. They unlock in the mid 500s, they aren't that expensive, and there's no way we'd be able to put them off further, even if we didn't want them to try and cause a baby boom.Yes, this is important but it's also why I think this can be relegated to the second industrial station in about ten years. Because G-Drives are going to always be extremely STU expensive for a long time. And we're unlikely to solve that issue any time soon. This means that we're going to have a very limited production rate for new G-Drive ships for quite a while. On the other hand, we can absolutely build as many fusion drive ships as we want. Which means that we can do things like setting up a shipping lane from say, the Earth-Luna system to Mars or Venus which transfers bulk cargo and has a new ship arrive every day despite it taking them six months to travel the full distance at worst. Whilst also doing a lot of other things at the same time.
We're also likely to be more interested in developing things within the inner system where fusion travel times aren't too bad for the next decade at least, despite the 'untold bounties' the rest of the system offers. Because that's the area in which the tiberium problem is (so far) contained within, and also contains the three locations easiest to build the infrastructure needed to support large populations at. Those being Earth Orbit, Luna and Mars.
Or to put it bluntly, those small potatoes with a tiny luxury good growing garden are what we need right now. Getting large potatoes and a full farm for everything would be great and absolutely needed in time. But better to build the house we're going to be living in first rather than having massive farm than gives us more goods than what we know to do with whilst we're still in a leaky tent.
- Location
- indeterminate, possibly non-existent
- Pronouns
- Any
The G-drive bay, like the others, is for the Enterprise only. Columbia and Shala have their own bays, some of which are unique, others are shared between the two.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So first up, this isn't how it really works. The STU expense isn't how much it costs to make one G-Drive ship. It doesn't cost us -STUs to build one-off things like the Pathfinder or a Tiberium Inhibitor. What costs us is constant STU usage, such as the T-Glass. We're creating +15 STU per-turn. (And not stockpiling any yet, presumably because our science departments are sucking them up.) The only things that cost -STUs on the economic indicators are things that will be constantly building STU-using technologies. So, yes, a G-Drive shipyard will cost us some amount of STUs. But the expense will be proportional to how many ships we build each turn, and given it'll be as a small side-addition to the Enterprise rather than some massive dedicated shipyard, I highly doubt it's going to be "extremely STU expensive" until years in the future.
As for that "tiny luxury garden". We have 11 phases total of Lunar mines currently. This is from over in SCEDQuest, where Luna had 20 scan-able locations, and we've scanned 19/20 of them. Meanwhile, the asteroid belt has 80 locations. Mars has 50 locations. Mercury and Jupiter's moons are listed but haven't been planned for surface missions yet. Ceres, one of many dwarf planets, has 15 locations. Even excluding all the locations we haven't planned to explore yet, there are 150 ready-to-explore locations, and cutting that by 50% gives us an estimate of 75 phases of mining projects. Compare 75 to 11. And keep in mind that number will only keep growing bigger and bigger over time. If you want to grow your fancy luxury garden, it helps to have fat stacks of cash. Making Orbital another source of income over the next ten friggin years, or 2.5 Plans can only help us build more things both near Earth and across the solar system. Conversely, sticking our heads in the sand for the next ten years is only going to harm us in the long run.
(Also. There's practical limits to how much stuff we can squeeze into Earth orbit before things get crowded. But if we expand elsewhere, there will be tons of places to put all kinds of massive installations and colonies and such.)
- Location
- Mobile, Alabama
Best way to learn is to do it. I'm also very curious what's in the solar system. Did the Scrin mining team leave anything laying around? Whatever nonsense is chilling in space.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
First of all, I think a figure that has been thrown around is something like a single G-Drive ship produced per year uses 1 STU (Might have been here, might have been on the Discord sometime in the last couple of days since I started reading it). Any chance I could get a confirmation or more accurate number @Ithillid ? So yes, if we want any particularly useful numbers of G-Drive ships soon, it's going to be eating STUs like crazy.
Secondly, if we're just talking about Mars and the Asteroid Belt, then those should absolutely be possible for next-generation fusion drive craft. Especially if they're automated like it's suggested 'cargo shuttles' might become. If that does happen, then personnel transfers using a limited run of G-Drive ships would be entirely acceptable. If it doesn't, then using fusion drive ships for that should still be possible, if more of a headache. Though I wouldn't want to go further than that, hence why I've always had the G-Drive Bay as a top priority for the second station in a decade as that'll be about when we start exploring development of the outer system in depth.
Finally, by 'tiny luxury garden' I wasn't talking about mining mars and the asteroid belt. Those are included in the 'small potatoes'. That was more things like massive colony build up on Mars and developing mining beyond the asteroid belt as well as research facilities.
Last edited:
- Location
- The Underdark
The thing is that one per year is a very useful amount of shipping growth. Because a single GDdrive ship can make the trip to Mars and back multiple times a quarter. They can haul 1350 odd cubic meters of stuff from out to Pluto and back every single quarter. More round trips with Mars of course. And it will be more than one STU per quarter, but nothing insane, more like 3-5.