- Location
- USA
Unfortunately, there's the wingmen deployment and frigates as well.
So many things we need, so few dice and energy.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
So many things we need, so few dice and energy.
- Location
- Somewhere between the stars
The section about the espionage was out of the forums though. It would be kinda weird talking about wider inflirtation into a program we would be keeping an eye on, post it as threadmark then pass it of as being non-canon/not important.
That being said, we have checked it 3 times now, so if we have substantial infiltration it must be hidden to such an extend we'd need a crit, assuming there still is one.
At which point we're reaching sunk cost fallancy, and are letting other departments suffer by a mono-focus at service.
We've checked and found nothing, and at this point, i think we just have to accept that result and just do regular check, alongside all other deparments as normal, unless INOPS comes with bargin in with new information
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We have seven turns with 8+ dice each turn. Minimum 56 Military dice left in the Plan. (And we tend to put free dice into Military a lot.) Immediately next turn, the priority is still wingman drones, but for the rest of the Plan it'll depend on what projects we'll want to have completed before the next Plan cycle. If we lowercase-p plan things right, we should be able to slot in the remaining shipyards before the end of next year.
I believe the paranoia over infiltration of Services may have come from people, most prominently me, misinterpreting this sentence as referring to the AI development team when it may have referred to GDIOnline, which was swept by InOps after Attercop threatened another user's children. Considering he also mentioned that the site itself was in the palm of Nod's hand, I should have seen this.
For some reason, I was under the impression that there were "critical" parts of the narrative written by Ithillid. I know GDIWife and most others are user-created characters, though.
Looking at the timeline makes it very unlikely for them to be ready in Q1 of next year as constrution cant start before the yard is done so that starts in Q3, carriers need weeks of training before they are ready for combat as first you need to train the naval crew to the point they can sail the ship and only then you can start integrating the airwing. add in time to fix any bugs in the prototype
I think we should build it at one die per turn as they most likely won't be ready unless the war last multiple years but we are going to take enough land and ports the navy is going to need the escorts post-war to keep the logistic flowing.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Pretty much.
I think I mentioned earlier saving Liquid Tiberium power for 'break glass in case of emergency'. This feels like the time to break at least that first phase.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Usually Ithillid will start a topic and then let people fill in posts for it. For this update, he wrote Dr. Granger's post at the very start.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
@Ithillid ?
Thank you.
Anyway, this isn't nearly as bad as I'd feared. I really do think we can commit to have all the escort carrier yards done by 2061Q4, too, given that there are only three big projects plus a 120-pointer that I'm figuring on doing 2060Q3 (with the bulk of the 2060Q2 yard production going to a frigate yard).
Let's see...
2060Q2: 4 Dice (2-3 Dice Frigate Yard 1, 1-2 Dice Merchantman Conversions)
2060Q3: 4 Dice (finish FY1, finish Merchantman conversions, 1-2 dice on battleship yard conversions, 0-1 on Dublin)
2060Q4: 3 Dice (1-2 on Dublin, 1-2 on Frigate Yard 2)
2061Q1: 3 Dice (1-2 on FY2, 1-2 on Nagoya)
2061Q2: 3 Dice (1-2 on Nagoya, 1-2 on Frigate Yard 3)
2061Q3: 3 Dice (1-2 on FY3, 1-2 on New York)
2061Q4: 3 Dice (1-2 on New York, 1-2 on FY4 or ???)
So with a steady commitment we can almost certainly commit to the escort carriers by plan end, since roughly speaking we just have one two-die and three three-die yards to build, and the Capital Goods and Energy budget is manageable if we're committed.
Macrospinners aren't worth doing for the Energy cost, not least because resources and Light Industry dice spent on macrospinners for the Energy are resources and dice NOT spent on Bergen, and Bergen has a much higher Energy return on investment.
Like, finishing Reykjavik nets us +6 Energy for roughly 1500 Light Industry progress (~20 dice, 400 R)
Finishing Bergen up through Phase 4 nets us +31 Energy for roughly the same number of dice and 600 R.
I think we should stop Reykjavik at Phase 4 and prioritize Bergen for Energy, because we'll be getting our Capital Goods fix from Nuuk at that point.
The trick is that nearly all of us were planning to spend a lot of dice on shipyards for the rest of the Plan even before we discussed these commitments, so in a sense, all we're doing is promising to do what we were planning to do anyway.
Unless your plan involves ditching Karachi, whether you're a fan of the merchant conversions is beside the point; we need carrier decks in the water, and I'm pretty sure they won't be ready in time even if we build the entire set of escort carrier yards literally this very next turn.
The only question is how much wiggle room we give ourselves in pursuit of that goal.
No, see, that's the problem.
The carrier yards are urgent priority for the Navy; the reason the light carriers won't be ready in time is because we chose to deprioritize the Navy and didn't do them until now. And that's a potentially fatal weakness if we're planning for Karachi.
The conversions are basically our last chance to get carrier decks in the water before Karachi, and we need carrier decks in the water for Karachi. We're just going to have to deal with the ramifications of promising to have the yards built, because that's the price of having a navy capable of doing what we need it to do.
I don't know. We can keep slamming out more fusion power quite easily. Free dice on liquid tiberium reactors to finish this phase may well be worth it, but more phases are only a good idea if we can figure out where to source the Political Support. Which is a problem, especially since we're already looking at burning another 10 PS to get the carrier decks we need for Karachi, and very few of our +Political Support options are things we can really afford to spend dice on right now.
Note that we'll have frigate shipyards to build as well- but even both the frigate and light carrier yards combined probably only add up to about two phases of fusion plants. Now that we're getting serious about spending Free dice in Heavy Industry, it's easy for us to make that up in the time available.
Not a bad idea if they work the way I hope, and I'm sure they're more politically palatable than liquid tiberium reactors.
You never know, the option might unlock in 1-2 turns. Sometimes a d16 die roll goes well.
Things are complicated.
Remember, Political Support isn't a measure of public opinion, not directly. It's a measure of legislative support.
...
The public probably doesn't care much, and maybe not at all, if we convert some merchantmen into carriers, except insofar as talking heads on the news tell them to care, or except insofar as later, after some of those conversion carriers are sunk, talking heads on the news blame them. If the typical GDI citizen reads online an article saying "the Treasury is funding the conversion of thirty big freighters into Orca carriers for escort duties," then they'll probably shrug. The 10% of most knowledgeable GDI citizens will, like, post comments on the article about how this is like the escort carriers from World War Two. The 1% most knowledgeable, many of them actual Navy veterans, may be commenting about how the ships are unsurvivable... but without systematic clout, they won't affect public opinion much. The public, in and of itself, doesn't care or will just be glad to have more 'war'-ships.
But trouble is... admirals care intensely about the conversion carriers. And admirals talk to legislators, and those legislators challenge us on the wisdom of projects they know the admirals don't like. So basically, we're losing political support because of that.
...
By contrast, building liquid tiberium power is unpopular with both politicians and the public, mitigated only by our promise to not do very much of it and hopefully do as little as we can.
The uphill political battle with liquid tiberium power is mostly finding anyone, anywhere, willing to consent to its construction.
The uphill battle with conversion carriers is going to be almost entirely about the admiralty, specifically, raising a political shitstorm because they think we're ignoring their need for proper light carriers and foisting these janky improvised jeep carriers on them instead.
The battleship yards should be converted with two dice in the first turn, because getting the yards set up is a priority, and we don't want to waste total time because those yards will be needed to maintain the remaining battleships in the future.
The 200-point yards in New York, Dublin, and Nagoya should be given two dice on the first turn and one die per turn afterwards to finish them off.
The merchantman conversions should be finished with three dice if at all possible, or failing that two in the first turn and as many as necessary in the immediate turn after, because the biggest problem with those ships is going to be getting them worked up and ready to go, and we don't want to risk them still being under construction any later than 2060Q4 when we really need them up and running to free up fleet carriers for Karachi.
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I think that your points are valid. However, I draw somewhat different interpretations. Let's look at them one by one.
First of all, you're right to stay that Kane is watching. This is a very important motivator for the major warlords, who are all competing for the favor of their absent master. Anyone who wants a place in the Inner Circle is strongly motivated to focus on GDI rather than their rivals, because when the Prophet returns he won't be impressed by the warlord who put more effort into fighting rivals than attacking GDI.
However, this doesn't necessarily prevent conflict between lesser factions. The Big Warlords are fighting for Kane's favor, because that favor will elevate some of them above the rest. A lesser warlord may be less focused on Kane's favor, because odds are that the Prophet will never even hear their name. They are likely to have simpler goals.
A secure base of operations. Advanced technology, or failing that decent equipment for their soldiers. Medicine and food and clean water. These seem like reasonable objectives, but Nod suffers from resource scarcity. The Big Warlord needs tribute for their attacks against GDI, and after you've met quota you may not have much left for yourself. So what do you do if you want more?
Well, you take it. You have a neighbor who seems vulnerable, so you move in and you grab their stuff. Maybe you'll invent a nice justification afterwards. As long as the Big Warlord keeps getting his tribute, he may not care who provides it.
I wrote a canonized omake discussing how this kind of thing works, how an ambitious warlord can simply throw his rivals out of desirable territory when he thinks his boss is too busy to stomp on him. These "small" power struggles happened pretty commonly in the medieval era, as small warlords fought over their borders. It is more likely to happen when habitable territory is decreasing.
Secondly, I'm not talking about what happens when, say, retreating Nod warlords from Western Europe make their way to Mehretu's territory. They'll bend the knee and do as they're told. I'm talking about what happens during a proper anarchy, when the Big Man has fallen.
Imagine that Gideon is killed in an air strike. Or, uh, "killed in an air strike". The succession is disputed, and suddenly there is no Big Warlord who can settle these disputes. There are several contenders for the throne, all struggling for power, and during the anarchy an ambitious commander can seize that factory they've always wanted.
The territory that was once controlled by a major warlord is now controlled by several lesser warlords, none of whom can maintain proper order while they're distracted by the fight with their rivals. Under these circumstances, the ambitious and unscrupulous enjoy considerable freedom. The "home team" will not necessarily enjoy an advantage, as they are busy watching their neighbors, so the new arrivals have opportunities to reach for power.
Third, you're right to say that I was basing this on the movement of nomadic peoples, and that isn't a great metaphor. Nod does have a sense of being on the same team, and that will limit the fighting in some ways. Surviving Major Warlords will seek clients among the minor warlords, and the minor warlords who secure their favor will be able to win the conflict and establish themselves as the governing authority. China's biggest warlord serves Krukov; in the event of a North American collapse, Stahl could play kingmaker.
The cultural framework for conflict resolution exists, so we are unlikely to see "war to the knife". As you say, this is not the classical era. What we could see are extended power struggles among senior lieutenants fighting for primacy, the kind of conflict that probably will be resolved with rivals vassalized or dead and their surviving forces absorbed into the winning side. It won't be a conflict that breaks Nod, but it could be a fight that seriously distracts them during a period when they very much need to stand united.
Did we mess up?
It feels like we neglected the Navy for a very long time, and only made improvements when they started screaming at us and it became evident that Bintang was going to be a problem.
We did put some work into securing our logistics with shuttles, but I think shorting the Navy was a mistake. The fact that we're having to race to catch up in the middle of a war, and that we're going to convert merchantment to "carriers" to make up for our shortage of hulls...
I don't understand the mechanics of the game. However, it does feel like we consistently went for economic improvements and "soft power" options, while our military spending was reactive after Nod punched us in the mouth and we scrambled to deal with the resulting problems. The advantages of that approach are obvious- see the Caravanserai and the United Yellow List- but the costs are also substantial.
It feels like we neglected the Navy for a very long time, and only made improvements when they started screaming at us and it became evident that Bintang was going to be a problem.
We did put some work into securing our logistics with shuttles, but I think shorting the Navy was a mistake. The fact that we're having to race to catch up in the middle of a war, and that we're going to convert merchantment to "carriers" to make up for our shortage of hulls...
I don't understand the mechanics of the game. However, it does feel like we consistently went for economic improvements and "soft power" options, while our military spending was reactive after Nod punched us in the mouth and we scrambled to deal with the resulting problems. The advantages of that approach are obvious- see the Caravanserai and the United Yellow List- but the costs are also substantial.
It's -5 this phase, with the blurb from when we put a die into it indicating that, if GDI invested substantially in tiberium power, the PS cost is going to escalate rapidly.
- Location
- USA
Yes and no.
It would currently have been preferable if we had invested in the navy several turns ago.
However we had several other things to invest in that were equally or more important at the time, and we were waiting for a few upgrades to get done so they could be integrated during the development phase.
This came together quite well with the new wingmen drones that have everything the air force could need to excel.
Unfortunately the navy takes a while to get things out.
So while we no doubt have a much superior carrier than we would have had without last turns advancements the price we are paying is taking like a year to get any new ships built.
This is inconvenient.
But because of the investments we made every other area is doing quite well especially our military which is essential to getting and holding territory.
So... only time will tell whether we made the right decisions or not.
I'm personally hoping that if everything goes alright with the first phase the political cost will drop off as the stigma goes away.
Of course the exact opposite could happen. That is absolutely a possibility I freely admit.
Oh for sure. It took many heavy handed prods-moving to outright slapping us over the head with it-before people invested in any military that wasn't MARVS, for the most part.
"Came together" as though the wingmen drones haven't been an available option for many dozens of turns that have continuously ignored.
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- Location
- USA
Yes, because they now can have plasma warheads and a top of the line laser system.
With the airforce demanding them almost as long as the navy wanted carriers
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The odds are good that the stigma will stay as-is for the next 40 years at least.
40 years is generous. The Temple Prime Liquid Tiberium Bomb is responsible for millions of direct deaths, and as many, if not more deaths from the Visitors' invasion and spread of Tiberium.
At some point, "We can have something better later" loses out to "We can have this now".
Maybe things will work out, but if Bintang launches some kind of major naval offensive next turn we're going to wish that we had good ships now rather than great ships later.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yes to a point. On the other hand, the lesser warlord has to consider two complications.
Major warlords have some amount of political favor to spend with Kane, and are powerful enough that it would inconvenience Kane to have to deal with the fallout of their fall from grace. Minor warlords are not.
And major warlords have already had an opportunity to establish their reputation, giving Kane reason to show forbearance. Minor warlords often are not.
If Kane hears that a major warlord Abdullah the Awesome has had a skirmish with another major warlord in which 500 Nod troops were killed, and that this was the fault of his personal pride, he may send a Confessor to deliver Abdullah a sternly worded letter.
If Kane happens, which he admittedly might not, the learn that minor warlord Badr the Bathetic has had a similar skirmish for a similarly foolish reason, that Confessor may be delivering a sternly worded letter... or that Confessor may be delivering a pistol with a single bullet chambered.
Badr is more expendable to Kane's purposes.
You're quite right- on the other hand, while (as you note in a later paragraph that I don't quote), there can be civil wars when a major warlord is violently eliminated with no clear successor...
...The Regency War is not well suited to create such situations. The warlords are all experienced in keeping their location a secret, because they all grew up in the pre-TWIII environment where any conspicuous Nod installation was apt to get ionized in short order. So the actual top-ranking warlords are relatively unlikely to attend their battles in person (they are the heads of state of decentralized and distributed quasi-nations with populations in the tens of millions in most cases!)
I think that in most cases where we manage to kill or truly dethrone a warlord and create "proper anarchy," we will have done so much damage to the Nod forces in the area that the displaced minor warlords will lack the strength to really accomplish much against other minor warlords who were not part of the fighting. They can only fight so hard over the scraps of a GDI assault when they themselves have been reduced to scraps.
I'm not saying there will be NONE of the conflicts you describe, and NO Nod internecine conflict. My point is that centripetal forces exist to balance out the centrifugal forces that might otherwise cause these conflicts to become intense.
A big part of the problem is that we simply do not and never will have the capacity to fund every military priority. We've actually spent a LOT of dice on the military, especially since 2055 (which was quite a while ago now).
The Navy is underfunded compared to what we're asking of it, and that's bad, but if we'd given them all they asked for, we'd almost certainly have some other branch of the armed forces that was light or at least softened compared to what we were asking of it. Maybe the balance we struck was suboptimal but it could have been a lot worse.
That's false. What you're saying isn't true.
See here:
Count the Military dice spent, quarter by quarter.
As far as I can tell at a glance from those notes of mine... We have activated all our dedicated Military dice on all but six of the 40 turns since game start. Two of those turns were in 2054 and 2058 when dealing with the aftermath of reapportionment. Three of the other four were mostly back in 2050-51, when GDI's population included a lot of homeless refugees and we were literally on a doomsday clock towards "economy collapses because every microchip fabricator on the planet has been blown up."
Meanwhile, we have spent vast numbers of Free dice on military projects. Even in the First Four Year Plan, thanks to Free dice, we spent a total of 52 Military dice, an average of 3.25 Military dice per turn when we only had three dice in that category.
And of course, our Free dice expenditure on the military, as well as our dedicated Military dice count, expanded greatly in the Second Plan.
We've always done a lot of military stuff that wasn't MARVs.
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I wasn't trying to imply that we can have every branch 100% prepared, but our spending was very uneven among the branches. I'd rather have not quite as good a military in some places but overall quite solid than a fantastic military with a couple glaring and crippling flaws especially one that our economy & logistics rely upon.
Edit: We have done military projects, but it's always hyper focused in one or two areas at any given time. And also relative to all our other investments, our military investments often feel lacking. We do often throw free dice at them, but it's not often we do so with any significant amount without our hand being forced by plan goals or some sort of threat.
Edit: We have done military projects, but it's always hyper focused in one or two areas at any given time. And also relative to all our other investments, our military investments often feel lacking. We do often throw free dice at them, but it's not often we do so with any significant amount without our hand being forced by plan goals or some sort of threat.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Do me a favor.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
Lead the Global Defense Initiative into the future after the Third Tiberium War.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
@Vehrec does a breakdown of our military spending by category. Would you mind going back and adding up the number of Navy dice, and the number of total dice?
- Location
- The Underdark
You made a single key mistake in the preparation for this war. Not realizing that naval strategy is a build strategy. You don't build the navy you want in six months before the war begins. You put in the investments now, for the navy that you want three to five years from now.
The Navy were asking for new point defence systems, and new cruisers, from the very beginning of the quest. Those are only just starting to be put out in the field in any significant number now. It doesn't matter how many dice we've put in for them if the projects we did weren't the core vital ones, and weren't done at such a time to actually be relevant when we need them.
Edit: Military planning is not the same as economy planning. We can't play 100% for the long game and "just get by" in the interim, we can't discard everything for the sake of efficiency and keep putting off needed options because they might be better some nebulous point in the future, or we take losses we can't afford in the here and now.
Edit: Military planning is not the same as economy planning. We can't play 100% for the long game and "just get by" in the interim, we can't discard everything for the sake of efficiency and keep putting off needed options because they might be better some nebulous point in the future, or we take losses we can't afford in the here and now.
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We've spent forty dice on the Navy, out of 233 total, unless I forgot a branch.
- Location
- USA
Does that count the orca refits?