Say, does anyone know why MARV hubs just got like three times more expensive? Is it because it's hard to build them while Nod is shooting at you really aggressively and the weapons the hubs mount are being diverted to the front- the obvious reasons- or is there more going on?
If the Navy truly doesn't need the conversions, it's perfectly free to keep them steaming around in circles in teh Sea of Japan or the North Sea or some other relatively secure waters as "training ships" for Orca pilots to practice carrier landings, or something like that. Or to dock 'em and not use 'em.
The reality is, the Navy needs decks that Orcas can fly off of. It needs 'em bad. A lot of their resistance to the conversion carriers is motivated, not just by the possibility that ships will sink, but by the fear of Treasury stiffing them again and only giving them the conversion carriers.
I have no intention of letting that happen, so I'm willing to go ahead.
And yes, we're gonna lose a few of the thirty conversion carriers. It'll happen. But... you know what? If the priority is keeping your ships safe, the best thing to do is to never leave harbor with any of them. Navy ships have the potential of getting sunk (we lost two cruisers in the Manchester raid, as I recall, for instance) because Navy ships have missions to fulfill. And right now, the navy simply does not have enough steel afloat to fulfill those missions.
So let's prioritize getting them plenty of steel. It may not be perfect steel, but perfect is the enemy of the good in this case.
I'm kinda surprised at the absolute lack of merchantman conversion CAMs as well. I mean, we've failed because we forgot that perfection is the enemy of good. How are we going to handle this failure?
1) Order up CAMs and put down a frigate yard down this turn (plus whatever else), accepting that we'll be putting naval personnel in danger on convoy escort with a "jeep carrier" in order to free up carriers to hopefully do Karachi without majorly reducing convoy protection. It "endangers" the sailors and air crew a bit more than a purpose built CVE, but they volunteered to fight and potentially die to protect humanity from what wishes it harm. Those CAMs will likely be phased out in 2-4 years depending on CVE numbers in service by that point. And we don't essentially abandon our promise.
2) Order CVE yards and frigate yards, accepting that we'll be putting civilian merchant marine crews in at least temporary danger by shifting their escorting carriers to hopefully do Karachi and not necessarily having frigates to cover the shift. I feel like this should be mostly right out, as we're basically saying, "fuck the civilian crews, we're protecting our military personnel from that same risk." Though depending on when frigates hit the water vs when the carriers are pulled, the amount of danger the civilian crews are in might not be as bad, or bad for very long. But it's a "maybe" on coverage vs a "certain" with CAMs.
3) We order CVE yards and maybe frigate yards, trying to at least partially renege on our promise and put off doing Karachi for an additional year or more beyond next year. This keeps everyone "safer," at the cost of deliberately refusing to uphold our promise. How many times since the quest started have we failed to keep our promises? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any (but I'm aware my memory is not close to 100% on the quest). And what happens if Karachi is not on the table for altering, or altering to the degree we "want"? Welp, I guess we're stuck fucking over the civilian merchantman crews survival to some extent in order to protect soldiers from danger, or deliberately breaking our promise and refusing to do Karachi anyhow.
Could the Regency War go to shit for our side by Q1-2 2061? Sure. But it seems like we would rather prematurely decide to bend/break our word than have to make a hard call that would risk soldiers' lives due to our own failures. The Treasury has worked hard the last decade or so to rebuild its image post-Boyle and build trust in its decisions. I feel like Admiral Cunningham's words in 1941 apply here. "It takes the Navy three years to build a ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition. The evacuation will continue."
Also, apologies if this sounds combative or attacking. Not intended to be that, but I'll acknowledge that 2am me might not have the right phrasing.
Say, does anyone know why MARV hubs just got like three times more expensive? Is it because it's hard to build them while Nod is shooting at you really aggressively and the weapons the hubs mount are being diverted to the front- the obvious reasons- or is there more going on?
Say, does anyone know why MARV hubs just got like three times more expensive? Is it because it's hard to build them while Nod is shooting at you really aggressively and the weapons the hubs mount are being diverted to the front- the obvious reasons- or is there more going on?
Because I blended in the 225 progress Super MARV fleets into the project. So now, instead of the process being build hub and get rollover, then build fleet, you build the hub and fleet, and then roll over to another hub.
That 'one engineer' is the person giving +10 to all infrastructure rolls right? If yes, then would their opinion very much matter here if they only reason they joined was because Karachi was promised to them? Not upholding it when it IS possible to do seems disingenuous.
I don't get this. If the Navy doesn't have the ships to protect as many convoys then the number of non-essential convoys should just drop, and not let civilian lives be risked by doing the same amount of convoys without sufficient protection. The Logistics should take a hit, not the people.
In fact I am confused by all the implications that somehow by supporting Karachi, the amount of lives will be at risk as opposed to just Logistics by having less convoys that would be allowed to run at a time. Why? Is the military seriously going to allow convoys to go on as before with less protection per each convoy, as opposed to cutting down the number of convoys so each one is protect just as much as before? The excess amount of surplus Logistics isn't THAT important.
Hence the renegotiation, she will probably negotiate but if she refuses to be reasonable then tough. She is noted in the description we were given when we took her that she has a reputation for fighting bureaucrats on projects so she may try and argue her way out of it.
Marids, I'm not talking about civilian lives. You'll find that the ships carrying essential goods are also carrying non-essentials as well. All convoys are technically essential and stopping the transport of civilian goods shoots civilian morale in the foot. Yes, people were thinking that they may go back to the post-TW3 shortages. They were also worried that Nod troops could wind up swarming through the BZ cities again if things went that badly. Thing is though, we've kicked off this war on a rather strong footing and 3 months in the average civilian is now thinking that things will be alright. The average thought is that GDI is going to be winning this war and that aside from the military diverting chip production to support itself there will be no further major shortages.
I was going to write a lot more, and did, but you've already made up your mind and nothing anyone says ever changes it.
I didn't even want Karachi in the first place but everyone picked the woman who wants it. Renegotiating makes sense to do and lets us come back once we're actually ready to pull it off.
Hell, even the navy was saying they don't want to do it. The people we need to do it, say don't. Only the army wants it.
I'm kinda surprised at the absolute lack of merchantman conversion CAMs as well. I mean, we've failed because we forgot that perfection is the enemy of good. How are we going to handle this failure?
We've basically missed the window for anything Naval to assist with Karachi. While we can rush the conversions, that doesn't really help with the Navy being low on ships as it is.
But I don't think that is a problem. We still have a year to build up other forces to do Karachi.
Ground Forces are strongly for Eastern Paris.
Steel Talons are for it, if we can deliver stuff for them. (Which is a Plan Goal anyway.)
Air Forces said that their Auroras are ready for Eastern Paris.
Space Force said that they'd like some troops before they talk about doing anything.
The Navy did not rule it out. They just said that it wasn't their preference.
Eastern Paris is our Masterstroke. And I'm not seeing any reason not to do.
If doing it as a landing force from the sea isn't viable, we just march down from the Himalayas.
The first wave of Sharks should be ready for Q1 2061 if we can get a shipyard through this quarter. If the project doesn't complete, or if the ships aren't ready, we can delay it by a quarter - perhaps building a second shipyard - and land in Q2.
Karachi is 100% possible, and I believe it is worth it.
We've basically missed the window for anything Naval to assist with Karachi. While we can rush the conversions, that doesn't really help with the Navy being low on ships as it is.
But I don't think that is a problem. We still have a year to build up other forces to do Karachi.
Ground Forces are strongly for Eastern Paris.
Steel Talons are for it, if we can deliver stuff for them. (Which is a Plan Goal anyway.)
Air Forces said that their Auroras are ready for Eastern Paris.
Space Force said that they'd like some troops before they talk about doing anything.
The Navy did not rule it out. They just said that it wasn't their preference.
Eastern Paris is our Masterstroke. And I'm not seeing any reason not to do.
If doing it as a landing force from the sea isn't viable, we just march down from the Himalayas.
Talons only said that they don't want to turtle up, they gave no opinion on anything else and even said they wouldn't be able to help much anyway.
Air forces said they could support anything.
You don't march out from the Himalayas. The same geographic conditions that make it so good to defend also make attacking from it a nightmare.
Because I blended in the 225 progress Super MARV fleets into the project. So now, instead of the process being build hub and get rollover, then build fleet, you build the hub and fleet, and then roll over to another hub.
That is a very logical move. The only question on my mind is whether there's an internal milestone within the project where you go "okay, this represents the hub being set up and in place and able to defend itself, but with no MARVs," which is a detail we can learn in gameplay.
I'm kinda surprised at the absolute lack of merchantman conversion CAMs as well. I mean, we've failed because we forgot that perfection is the enemy of good. How are we going to handle this failure?
1) Order up CAMs and put down a frigate yard down this turn (plus whatever else), accepting that we'll be putting naval personnel in danger on convoy escort with a "jeep carrier" in order to free up carriers to hopefully do Karachi without majorly reducing convoy protection. It "endangers" the sailors and air crew a bit more than a purpose built CVE, but they volunteered to fight and potentially die to protect humanity from what wishes it harm. Those CAMs will likely be phased out in 2-4 years depending on CVE numbers in service by that point. And we don't essentially abandon our promise.
2) Order CVE yards and frigate yards, accepting that we'll be putting civilian merchant marine crews in at least temporary danger by shifting their escorting carriers to hopefully do Karachi and not necessarily having frigates to cover the shift. I feel like this should be mostly right out, as we're basically saying, "fuck the civilian crews, we're protecting our military personnel from that same risk." Though depending on when frigates hit the water vs when the carriers are pulled, the amount of danger the civilian crews are in might not be as bad, or bad for very long. But it's a "maybe" on coverage vs a "certain" with CAMs.
3) We order CVE yards and maybe frigate yards, trying to at least partially renege on our promise and put off doing Karachi for an additional year or more beyond next year. This keeps everyone "safer," at the cost of deliberately refusing to uphold our promise. How many times since the quest started have we failed to keep our promises? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any (but I'm aware my memory is not close to 100% on the quest). And what happens if Karachi is not on the table for altering, or altering to the degree we "want"? Welp, I guess we're stuck fucking over the civilian merchantman crews survival to some extent in order to protect soldiers from danger, or deliberately breaking our promise and refusing to do Karachi anyhow.
Could the Regency War go to shit for our side by Q1-2 2061? Sure. But it seems like we would rather prematurely decide to bend/break our word than have to make a hard call that would risk soldiers' lives due to our own failures. The Treasury has worked hard the last decade or so to rebuild its image post-Boyle and build trust in its decisions. I feel like Admiral Cunningham's words in 1941 apply here. "It takes the Navy three years to build a ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition. The evacuation will continue."
Also, apologies if this sounds combative or attacking. Not intended to be that, but I'll acknowledge that 2am me might not have the right phrasing.
I'm with you 100%, actually, and am working on a plan accordingly. I think our reputation for at least making a good faith effort to make our goals happen, combined with the fact that the Navy's need for hulls cannot be met by frigates alone or they would have been prioritizing the frigates over the light carriers instead of the other way around in their reports to us...
Well, this necessitates both the light carrier yards and the merchant conversions. And for us to at least not give up on Karachi yet, since the preparations for Karachi are identical to other preparations we'd be making anyway.
We've basically missed the window for anything Naval to assist with Karachi. While we can rush the conversions, that doesn't really help with the Navy being low on ships as it is.
No, it does. It's math. "Too few ships" plus "ships" equals "more, if not necessarily truly enough, ships."
Depending on whether we set a 2061Q2 or Q4 benchmark for our Karachi efforts, we could very easily have a quite significant force of "more ships" in the water that could make the Navy's situation considerably less painful. This includes both the merchant conversions and the first wave of frigates from the new frigate yards.
But I don't think that is a problem. We still have a year to build up other forces to do Karachi.
Ground Forces are strongly for Eastern Paris.
Steel Talons are for it, if we can deliver stuff for them. (Which is a Plan Goal anyway.)
Air Forces said that their Auroras are ready for Eastern Paris.
Space Force said that they'd like some troops before they talk about doing anything.
The Navy did not rule it out. They just said that it wasn't their preference.
Eastern Paris is our Masterstroke. And I'm not seeing any reason not to do.
If doing it as a landing force from the sea isn't viable, we just march down from the Himalayas.
EDIT: This Plan Modified to Fix Mistakes. See New Version.
[] Plan By Apollo and Poseidon
Approval-vote shout-out to @FrozenChosen , who had the idea to put merchantman conversion carriers into their plan multiple pages before me! As of this writing, the plan only has two supporters, FrozenChosen and mine, but I just want to show them some respect for seeing an important military necessity and trying to make it happen!
EDIT EDIT:
[] Plan: Starting our Strategic Area Defence Networks and giving the Navy Hulls
[] Plan Second Vanguard, delaying Karchi, balsa flattops
[] Plan No Develop, Only Deploy
Further approval votes for plans that, as of 1:30 or so PM Eastern Standard Time on 25 January 2022, included the merchantman conversions.
So, modification changelog from my last draft plans:
1) Updated cost of isolinear chip development.
2) Neural Interfaced Operating Theaters are a much more efficient way to gain +Health than Automatic Medical Assistants. Switching over. The 40 R freed up by spending fewer Service dice on the new project is going to be a major boon elsewhere in the plan.
3) Among other things, it gives me more wiggle room to address @Derpmind 's criticisms by funding Infrastructure more fully. One of the apartment dice has been shifted to the railroads, so the plan now has virtually certain expansion of a full phase of fortress towns and railroads, along with research into the tick-tank digger system in hopes of saving costs on further Infrastructure projects.
4) I am very grudgingly cutting the SADN deployment system. I don't like it, but the specific strategic dynamics of this particular conflict as it has played out make me think we have a bit of a window of opportunity in which our most critical targets are unlikely to take a hit. This then chains into the military reprioritization I discuss further down.
So basically, I tried to balance military investments without giving up on the very important Heavy Industry projects. This plan puts us within "sprint" distance of finishing Nuuk next quarter (though we may have to throw 4-5 dice), and comfortable range of finishing the sixth phase of fusion plants. We get a phase each of fortress towns and railroads to support Steel Vanguard, and in both cases wind up roughly midway to the next phase. The Tiberium category, too, finishes the current phase of Yellow Zone Harvesting and builds two railgun harvester factories to support Steel Vanguard, and startsChicago Phase 4, likewise aimed at supporting Steel Vanguard, specifically the part of it that involves making Gideon cry.
Neural Interfaced Operating Theaters offers huge efficiencies so I'm all over that.
The big thing is the military.
I support the merchantman carrier conversions. My reasons are as follows. First, the Navy's need to free up fleet carriers for offensive actions is real, it's why they've been asking us for escort carriers for literally a decade. Well, bad news, we can't get them escort carriers super fast, it takes years to build 'em. So to free up the fleet carriers in the middle of a war, which will potentially do a LOT of good, the conversion carriers are a short term necessity. Second, rhetoric about "deathtraps" aside, I don't actually anticipate more suffering and death caused by these carriers existing than by them not existing. The Navy being unable to deploy ships to proactively hunt down enemies isn't doing us any favors. The Navy simply not having the hulls to provide carrier escort of any kind for every convoy isn't helping either. Third, the conversion carriers can impact the overall course of the present war much more effectively than the light carriers which we will still build anyway. Fourth, "impact the overall course of the present war" does include making it possible to do a full Karachi Sprint in theory (2061Q2 and Q4) or a half-Sprint that still fulfills our promise to Gulati in Q4 alone.
So my plan is to give us a high chance of finishing the merchantman conversions and a high chance of finishing a frigate yard and a high chance of finishing the Apollo wingman drones. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a balancing act, and since none of the three projects have any rollover whatsoever, it's a bit iffy to stack up dice on any of them until they hit 95%+ success chances.
But I feel like this is what we need to do, both for the war effort as a whole and for Karachi in particular. It's not enough to just build the light carrier yards in the battleship slipways anymore; that would have been enough in 2056 or '58 but it's not now. Now, the reality is that we do have a navy short on hulls and we do need to prioritize just having the damn hulls, even if they're imperfect hulls that will totally get retired in 3-4 years when the Navy gets the actual light carriers they want from the light carrier yards we're gonna be building.
[] Plan I Refuse To Give Up On Karachi Yet
Infrastructure 6/6 Dice 105 R
-[] Yellow Zone Fortress Towns (Phase 4+5) 232/550 (2 Dice, 40 R) (Phase 4, 2/3.5 median on Phase 5)
-[] Rail Network Construction Campaigns (Phase 3) 159/300 (3 Dice, 45 R) (99% chance; 3/5.5 median to Phase 4)
-[] Tick Rapid Digger System Development 0/40 (1 Die, 20 R) (100% chance)
Heavy Industry 5/5 Dice + 3 Free Dice 180 R
-[] Continuous Cycle Fusion Plant (Phase 5+6) 232/600 (4 Dice, 80 R) (~100% chance Phase 5, 28% chance of Phase 6)
-[] Nuuk Heavy Robotics Foundry (Phase 3) 118/600 (3 Dice, 60 R) (3/6 median)
-[] Isolinear Chip Development (1 Die, 40 R) (90% chance)
Light and Chemical Industry 5/5 Dice 100 R
-[] Reykjavik Myomer Macrospinner (Phase 4) 378/640 (2 Dice, 40 R) (17% chance)
-[] Medical Supplies Factories 0/225 (3 Dice, 60 R) (60% chance)
Agriculture 4/4 Dice 50 R
-[] Freeze Dried Food Plants 73/200 (1 Die, 20 R) (13% chance)
-[] Blue Zone Aquaponics Bays (Phase 2+3) 3/280 (3 Dice, 30 R) (98% chance of Phase 2, 23% chance of Phase 3)
Tiberium 7/7 Dice 115 R
-[] Yellow Zone Tiberium Harvesting (Phase 7) 183/300 (2 Dice, 40 R) (97% chance)
-[] Chicago Planned City 3/600 (2 Dice, 40 R) (2/6.5 median)
-[] Railgun Harvester Factory (Dandong) 45/70 (1 Die, 10 R) (~100% chance)
-[] Railgun Harvester Factory (Porto) 0/70 (1 Die, 10 R) (85% chance)
-[] Intensification of Green Zone Harvesting (Stage 5+6) 63/200 (1 Die, 15 R) (Stage 5, 18% chance of Stage 6)
Orbital 6/6 Dice 110 R
-[] GDSS Enterprise (Phase 4) 456/765 (5 Dice, 100 R) (96.5% chance, median outcome 114/1535 to Phase 5)
-[] Orbital Cleanup (Stage 9) 41/85 (1 Die, 10 R) (98% chance, 13% chance of Stage 10)
(current plan is to allocate the two Military dice un-allocated HERE to two 10 R projects: one on plasma missiles, one on the Mastodon development)
945/965 R (Please check budget arithmetic?)
7/7 Free dice
VERY CONSERVATIVE ENERGY BUDGET
+9 (Existing Surplus) + 16 (Fusion Phase 5)
-1 (Medical Supplies) -1 (Freeze Drying) -2 (Dandong) -2 (Porto) -4 (Apollo backup dancer bots) - 6 (Angry Australian Frigates)
End Result: +9 surplus, well positioned to slam out another phase of fusion plants plus Reykjavik for +18 more in Q3
CONSERVATIVE CAPITAL GOODS BUDGET
+17 (Existing Surplus) +2 (Enterprise) -2 (Operating Theaters) -1 (Apollo backup dancer bots) -2 (Angry Australian frigates)
End Result: +14 Surplus, well positioned to slam out Nuuk Phase 3 and Reykjavik for +18 more Goods in Q3
That is a very logical move. The only question on my mind is whether there's an internal milestone within the project where you go "okay, this represents the hub being set up and in place and able to defend itself, but with no MARVs," which is a detail we can learn in gameplay.
I'm with you 100%, actually, and am working on a plan accordingly. I think our reputation for at least making a good faith effort to make our goals happen, combined with the fact that the Navy's need for hulls cannot be met by frigates alone or they would have been prioritizing the frigates over the light carriers instead of the other way around in their reports to us...
Well, this necessitates both the light carrier yards and the merchant conversions. And for us to at least not give up on Karachi yet, since the preparations for Karachi are identical to other preparations we'd be making anyway.
No, it does. It's math. "Too few ships" plus "ships" equals "more, if not necessarily truly enough, ships."
Depending on whether we set a 2061Q2 or Q4 benchmark for our Karachi efforts, we could very easily have a quite significant force of "more ships" in the water that could make the Navy's situation considerably less painful. This includes both the merchant conversions and the first wave of frigates from the new frigate yards.
I don't disagree although I'm not sure we can do "march from the Himalayas" in practice.
Couple of things here, firstly preparing for karachi 2061 isn't identical to karachi 2062 because it needs ships building far earlier to have a hope of having enough of them.
Second, q4 karachi is a terrible idea. That's doing an opposed naval landing + massive construction project during the monsoon season
[x] Plan: Release the Krakens!
[x] Plan I Refuse To Give Up On Karachi Yet
[x] Plan Sunrise
[x] Plan Shipyards, Tech and Industry
[x] Plan Shipyards, Air Force and Tech
[x] Plan Where's My Supersuit 2.0
It's got Chicago, rails, forts, gets started on the Sharks and Conversion Carriers, finishes up NISR, starts Wingmen. It's got Railgun Harvesters, Medical Supplies Factories, the Tick Rapid Digger System- This is everything I want. The only part I'm iffy about is the Isolinear Chips, but I understand it's popular and important. Love it.
It's got Chicago, rails, forts, gets started on the Sharks and Conversion Carriers, finishes up NISR, starts Wingmen. It's got Railgun Harvesters, Medical Supplies Factories, the Tick Rapid Digger System- This is everything I want. The only part I'm iffy about is the Isolinear Chips, but I understand it's popular and important. Love it.
The isolinear chips are not only there to potentially save Erewhon, but also because the power to revolutionize our computing applications may have great benefits. Things like making the AEVA options in Services cheaper in Capital Goods, for instance.
Couple of things here, firstly preparing for karachi 2061 isn't identical to karachi 2062 because it needs ships building far earlier to have a hope of having enough of them.
Either way, we end up needing pretty much the same thing- a whole mess of ships in a hurry.
The only real difference is that I'm willing to slam out the merchantman conversion carriers because I think we need them. And bluntly, I think we need them whether we Karachi or not.
Second, q4 karachi is a terrible idea. That's doing an opposed naval landing + massive construction project during the monsoon season
If we get some new hulls in the water, and if the overall war situation goes well, we may well be in a position to push for a full Karachi Sprint in 2061Q2. That's a year from now. A lot can happen in a year. Or we might at least be able to push for Phase 4 completion (all we really promised) in 2061Q4, since that IS very much something we can do in a single turn of intensive dice investment.
The maximum amount of ships we can have available for freeing offensive assets in time to do a Q2 Karachi is 60 frigates, or 40 frigates and an indeterminate number of "floating deathtrap" merchantman conversions. This is if we devote all military dice and most of our free dice (I have not done the math but at least for frigates you need 5 on each for surety, since this idea has absolutely no wiggle room) in an all-boat meme-plan. That way you have ships on the slip starting in Q3, finishing end of Q1 if everything goes smoothly, there are no instances of sabotage (while we are fighting a world war), and/or no supply problems or what have you. Granted if everything goes off without a hitch and if all those yards get their ships out in the minimum possible amount of time, we have that buffer, but as soon as any problem arises in any of those shipyards or conversions, we can pretty much say goodbye to that particular batch of hulls being relevant, which effectively slashes the number of ships we can then expect to be available for the operation by a third or so since the ones we do roll out are fewer and can't cover for as many fleet carriers.
Additionally, if we do this mad dash to get hulls in the water? We are kneecapping our other military production capacity and ability to support our current offensives either in the short or the medium term. Let me use examples:
Frigate rush: we roll out all these yards, which collectively eat more than an entire phase of fusion plants' worth of power, therefore we need to build more fusion, therefore we need to build two phases to keep ahead of demand - only the base 5 dice, because we've used all of our free dice on Military, because this is the only turn we have to build the frigates in time to help with Karachi (remember the 9-month minimum build time) and therefore any incomplete yards are functionally a waste of our time and resources. This is alongside the part where a frigate rush gives us no progress toward any of the other projects we need done sooner rather than later, like Wingmen or Orbital Nuke Caches or SADN for at least that turn. A slower roll on frigates only slightly alleviates these problems, in exchange for noticeably reducing the number of ships that frigates can relieve for supporting the invasion.
Merchantman conversions (which we probably will have to combine with a minimum of one frigate yard to be rolled out immediately, see above): we do this and immediately lock out a significant proportion of our military dice for probably the next year. Average roll on the military dice (statistically) is 77 (51+26), so assume we need 4 dice per shipyard, 2 for the battleship yard, for a total of 14 dice. Now, we likely can't start those yards Q2 - we need frigates too, since the merchantmen are deathtraps and we'll need proper warships to back them up and mitigate that. So like that, that's eaten most of the military dice for the turn, with most of the same problems of having to delay doing other useful things with those dice. We then have the problem of finishing the various carrier yards in the next several turns - frontload them, and accept doing very little useful with your military projects for the next several turns of an active war, or you slow-walk it in which case you have a similar problem only slightly less, or you push it off to do "later" when a good opportunity may never actually arise and there may be a critical need that goes unfulfilled as a result of rushing it at the last minute.
All this to say: you're relying on "if" as a source of optimism, but I'm significantly more pessimistic about our chances. If by some miracle of the dice Nod folds like a sheet of paper before Q1/Q2 2061 and we're in a position to do Karachi, I'll be happy to throw dice at it - renegotiating our plan goals to push back Karachi a year on the grounds of "we are in the middle of a full-scale war and cannot spare the materiel needed to do this operation and keep up our commitments" doesn't prevent that. But I'm not willing to bet on it.
My counter-proposal is we don't hope for the random number generator to be kind, we approach the character of Gulati - being written by Ithillid, who has a plan and is developing a story - and talk to her. We can ask what we can do to push back the deadline on Karachi by a year. A random number generator does not know reason, but a character/person can be expected to have a modicum of it. And ultimately, if she is unreasonable, and says that we have to hold to a promise made with the assumption of peacetime implementation in the middle of a war which wildly changes the risk factors, maybe we just have to accept that it's a task we fail. Failure happens, and it's not the end of the world. If Gulati walks and takes her +10, whatever. If Seo loses his job, whatever. If we fail, it is not the end of the quest.
I'm applying a quality factor to my "ships". Therefore the conversions are "less ships doing what they are designed for" plus "a bunch of ships doing what they aren't designed for". Therefore same amount of ships, but they are lower quality. I don't see that as something worth paying a lot for.
